C is for Catalogue Cluster

Variously taken from the 1972, 3 and '75-79 catalogue scans the other day, they are sort of eye-candy, but mostly low-res, or not that clear, so to draw the curtain on the recent miniseries, and to get them off Picasa, here they are with a few notes, and in no particular order!

 

Larger playsets.

 

1st version Americans, with 2nd version in the boat, but they seem to have been given 1st version German helmets! I refer you to my previous comments on art-departments m'lud - muppets!

 

Ist version in the box, 2nd version outside the box! Americans again. It's not clear what the Bren-carrier crew have on their heads, but I think it is British helmets.

 

This shot was reversed in the 1976 catalogue, obvious from the red beret!

 

Window boxes.

 

Big beast, post-war British Chieftain Tank it was also issued in German grey, along with this one in a big-box play set, it's expensive when you find it, and rarely complete!

 

More art-department shenanigans here, some of the bases are wrong!

 

A bit silly, the Centurion turret is underscale and won't go through tunnels!

 

More art-department shenanigans here, some of the bases are wrong!

Have I already said that?

 

I think this is a mock-up too, the kneeling guy doesn't look right in the card-art, or in the blister?

 

That's it, I could have done a few more, but the effort of cropping them all was a faff!

 

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Later the same day - 

 

I've added the Timpo paratroopers to the Parachute toy page, which you can find here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html

J is for Jeeermuns!

Except these Jeeermuns are enemy Fokkers! An oldie, but a goodie, unless you're a German reader, in which case my apologies, but in the original, it is funny! The internet can't agree whether Roy 'Chubby' Brown or Stan Boardman were responsible for the original, but I first heard it from Brown, so tend to credit him, however Boardman himself, credits an episode of This is Your Life, with Eamon Holmes, while other sources claim WWII Ace Douglas Bader, or the RAF in general for an apocryphal wives-tale!

 

Having removed the Plasma tent and British stretcher-team, we're left with a few shots of the Timpo Germans, so as a bit of a box-ticker . . .

 

. . . the 'eye candy' is the German stretcher-team and casualty, who is the same as the British one, but in grey plastic, the figures with their cross-straps and high-boots were a new sculpt.

 

Variations on a theme, the MG-34 gunner as issued on the left, in the middle a No.2 has been created with the ammo-box from the Vickers MG vignette, while a No.3 guard/spotter carries a rifle, he should have the tripod, but he seems to have lost it in the fog of battle, spare barrels and marker poles would be the responsibility of the No.2. Last version, over-moulded head on the left, with less-common oxide-brown base.

 

This shot, courtesy of Theo Van de Weerden shows a few more poses, including my favourite, the MP-38/40 SMG chap, also with one of the less common late colour bases, and this was the only set with two obvious officers - no infantry Y-straps, and a Luger/Mauser holster.

 

The 1976, '77 and '78 Timpo catalogues reversed the infantry set's image, so we get several left-hookers, something Airfix managed to do with their WWI reissue box-art a while ago! On the left is the donor for the rifle in my MG team!

 

Always worth remembering; the art & design and press/marketing departments are jobbing employees, not geeks, not historians, not modellers nor toy soldier enthusiasts, if they were, we wouldn't still be getting the Airfix Sd.Kfz.234 with those ridiculous toy mudguards!

E is for Eye Candy - Flamethrower

One of the rarest of the Timpo WWII or 'Modern Army' vignettes, and also, with the flame, one of the most imaginative, but it's the flame which helps make it rare, being marbled orange/yellow, the very fine locating stud at the hose end of the flame tends to fault-lines or brittleness, as does the quite thin silver hose, resulting in very few complete survivors.

 

Lacking accessories, and lacking the imagination of thinking they could use the shrub from the German mortar (in case it caught fire?), they - instead - added the bazooka rocket pile, which was more than a tad anachronistic!

E is for Eye Candy - Infantry Mortar

Back to the Timpo Germans, and their 80mm mortar, and the other of these little vignettes which you can switch-out the figures and swap (or swop!) for British or American troops, and given the differences between mortars at this scale, and the simplistic design, means it makes no difference who's serving it!

 

The shrubbery, or - more accurately - 'shrub' is as unique as the mortar, I thought it got further issues with one or two of the wild-west vignettes, but it didn't. Somewhere I have one reattached to a standard figure base, but it tends to fall sideways on the long-sides of the slightly ovoid base!

 

If you look carefully you'll see the fine crossbar is broken, it wasn't when I got it out of the tub, but it's definitely a weak-spot with this Timpo weapon-sculpt, and went the way of most others, I just hope the other end will stay attached, and one day I'll try a miniscule blob of superglue, off a pin, to try and hold it long enough to get a better shot for the final archive/A-Z Blog post.

E is for Eye Candy - Bazooka

This post was going to be the Plasma Tent, but in Googling it to see if it was really called the Plasma Tent (it was!), I found this post, in the results;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/01/b-is-for-bonus-post.html

 

So, that plan got pulled, and the British stretcher team have been taken out of the queue as well! I'm losing control of the queue! Anyway, I then plundered the catalogues for the WWII stuff (although Timpo tended to call them all 'Modern Army'), so we'll have an ephemera post at the end!

 

In the meantime, I only have two shots of the Bazooka, which came with the Americans, and I realised I was talking bollocks yesterday, only the two German sets lend themselves to being used by other nationality's figures, the others all have set-specific poses!

 

You might be able to get the SMG gunner from the first type British/Aussie to hold this, but, he'd be the only other figure with the right-hand hole/s, and I haven't tried! While the No.2 is even more specific to the US Army!

 

 I also had this shot of the Officer kicking around, so he can go here.

E is for Eye Candy - Searchlight

Part two of several, brings us to the German army searchlight, although like most of these vignettes, you can change the crew (the whole point of swoppets), something you can't do with the Vickers MG, or the US Flamethrower.

 

The operator is the mortar-bomb guy, with the mortar-bomb removed, or, probably more accutarately, the mortar-bomb moulding cycle not performed. Usually the officer with Luger came on his own base as a third figure, with the Binocular guy the other one on this base, something I will correct as I have spare bino' guys!

 

777 - the first cousin of the beast?

Note the extraneous hole under the searchlight's base-plate.

 

These are in photo-shoot sequence, so I must have tried the grenade thrower after I'd shot the more correct bloke?

E is for Eye Candy - British Vickers MG

Seen elsewhere, a year or two ago now, there's a whole bunch of these for box-ticking, so they can be February's theme! If the Timpo figures were 'pocket-money' toys, these accessory vignettes were high-day and Holliday treats, usually requiring a little financial input, from an adult!!

 

Getting across the weight of the thing, quite well, the 2nd version Timpo British Infantry with their section-support weapon, technically a medium machine-gun (.303, same as the rifleman's round) or infantry machine-gun, it was redesignated a heavy machine-gun in WWI when the Owen came in as a light machine-gun (also technically - or by today's standards - a medium machine-gun), becoming a medium machine-gun, officially, for WWII, although it remained bloody heavy!

 

***      **    *    **      *** 

 

Many years ago, maybe 1969, or 1970, I fired one, and nearly broke my jaw! Dad, who had little regard for regulations, and was Commandant of the Infantry Battle School at Brecon, thought it would be a good idea to wake the garrison with machine-gun fire on the 50m pistol range at the back of the camp, so had a Vickers set-up, and my Brother and I got to fire a few rounds each!

 

I can remember it was a cold, foggy morning; that clinging, Black Mountain mist, thickened with coal-smoke from the chimneys of the town, and still quite dark, and as I fired the thing I coughed and nearly caught my face on the shuddering body.

 

The SNCO who was with us, managed to get across his concerns about the whole performance, while doing whatever Dad told him, but Dad thought it was all highly amusing . . . It was an unconventional childhood, especially in those Wales days!

 

Strangely - fifteen-or-so years later, also at Brecon, while looking for something mundane like shovels or sandbags, we found (me and a couple of mates), in the POW Div's storeroom, a US .50cal, heavy machine-gun (in anodised silver?! A presentation, or demonstration piece?), just leaning against the wall, it didn't seem to have a cradle or tripod, and we just moved it out of the way, but that was a two-man lift, for two fit young men.

R is for Real Odds & Sods

The folder is called 'Odds & Sods'! I found it languishing in 2023, and all or some of it may have been seen here at Small Scale World already, all or most of it may be from a Sandown park show (some definitely is), most or a few bits may be from a visit to a friend's house, and bits but not all or most may have been a "Found these, if you want them" type donation in passing!

 

A large Indian, probably Tudor Rose, but others did do such figures and I haven't looked it up, scaled with a Kellogg's/Crescent ringmaster, to reveal the 90/100mm size of it.

 

Some of this is in the next shot, so definitely a Sandown or part Sandown lot, with highlights including all four Lone Star Wild West children and the bear-fighting backwoodsman (who can also fight the corresponding Indian, who can also fight the bear!), I remember posting the good Doctor Thadeus P. Tripp and his hidden bottles, from Timpo, while two Belgian composition stick-out at the back.

 

Posted a variation of this at the time, definitely Sandown, and fully covered somewhere? The Taxi went on to another home. We've since also seen a colour variation of the racing car, Rosedale I think, and possibly three in the collection now?

 

Not sure if I've posted these before? The Plasty ACW Union soldier is grist to the mill, but the Lone Star 60mm swoppet is a very different beast, it's the only one I've got, I've probably never seen the whole set, except in an article somewhere, and they are very hard to find, not least as they are getting brittle (my base is going), so a nice find!

 

A handful type donation? Three blow-moulds, two Japanese novelties, maybe Christmas cracker prizes in 'styrene, and a larger bear, probably Hong Kong and possibly once flocked, although that would mean somebody added the eyes after the flocking had come off? An acid-etched (or acid matted) pug-dog in poured/moulded-glass is a fun find, and some other odds and sods!

 

Two French figures on the left? Historical characters? Rural dress/regional stereotypes? Or just from a large wagon model-kit? A Marx dog, from the Hong Kong arm, in Warriors of the World style, possibly? And a Marx TV Tinykin definitely!

 

Prone to laying about; the Marx nude as a re-issue, a fallen but still fighting African Native from Elastolin, apparently not rare, as a whole sack-load or two were found when the factory closed-down, and one of several similar 'tied-to-a-tree' figures from various European manufacturers, and I never know which is which - Jean, Manurba/Heinerle, Dom, Texas, Hugonnet?

 

Kinder (technically; Marajà) Zorro, incomplete, but I already have three different colour variations, complete, with others still on the runner, so just useful spares, a Spanish (or Argentine copy?) horse, for which a rider may already be waiting in the pile, and one of these odd artillerymen, we saw here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/10/m-is-for-more-mashed-military-men.html

 

Eight years ago! Where does the time go?