Q is for Quickie! Seen Elswhere

And actually seen here! I was going to do a longish post on Ambulances, but I was up at 4:40 to drive to Luton and have successfully battled the salary mongs on the M25, back again. Now fatigue is catching-up, and I'm going to have a snooze before work, so here very much as a reminder, are a few bits from last year's Plastic Warrior show, which - as far as this year's - is only four Saturday's away, three and half weeks peeps! We did see them in last years show report posts, but these went on a Faceplant group at the time.

 

A pair of 1st version British Paratroopers from Airfix.

 

A trio of Trojan 14th Army figures, joining a growing sample.

 

Four of the Hilco ANZACs cloned from Timpo, which had been on my shopping-list last year, I'm not sure what's on the list this year, in fact, I don't know, because I've given it little thought, beyond the one or two 60mm Crescent Mohicans I still need! But I've three weeks to give it some thought, and save some dosh, and, so do you!

 

Contact details, I expect Brian Carrick (who was to feature in the Ambulance post!) will do a detailed travel guide in the next week or so, and there'll be more on Faceplant for those still there.

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

SS is for Shelfie Session

Try saying that when you're drunk! I had a quick whizz round all the usual suspects the other day, and managed to shoot a few shelfies of stuff which may be of some interest to some loyal readers, or not, as the case may be!

 

Shot this pair in Hobbycraft, and I may go back for the Sherman, if only to compare it with the CTS and Airfix ones? It's the Lego-compatible range of clip-together 'kits', but differing from Lego and Cobi, in not having any studs showing on the finished article, the top layer is all 'site specific' and fully-moulded/sculpted on the final, visible faces. These were new, about two years ago, and I venture to say, at 20-quid-a-pop, all the money!

 

Off to The Range for these, I think we've seen the Harry Potter one previously, but no matter, a reminder is as good as . . . something witty I can't come up with? Hard to pin down, but I'll try - branded to RMS, brand-marked to Project Craft and imported by CDS Group "...a third party logistics (3PL) and supply chain solutions provider!", so there!

 

While these were shot in B&M the other day, Magic Box have clearly moved-on from Crazy Bones, but there's still a blind-bag element to collecting the line, they are too unpiratey (spellcheck says I invented that word!) to save for ITLAPD, so here they are.

 

It's funny, because Bushy the Twig over at planetcamp has started going to B&M, and The Range, he'd better get himself to Smyths and Hobbycraft if he really wants to copy me! And a few garden centres, and Flying Tiger, and the other one! And he needs to stop showing us the stuff he leaves in the charity shops, which he also now visits, because that’s the shite nobody's buying!

Still, he does live castles now, as well, and he's finally added a Blog archive, after nearly 20 years! He added a link-list too, a couple of years ago, but managed to avoid this Blog, and has already cut it down and placed it where nobody can find it - doesn't like sharing, see!

 

But then it took him several years to start tagging, and only after one of his readers (guess who!) kept pointing out the lack of a tag-list! And then never did it that systematically, so it's still hard to find anything, nor did he retro-Tag the first few years' stuff, so that's lost!

Don't get me wrong, there's no exclusivity to any of this stuff, I can't expect to be the only person doing this, that, or the other, and a good idea, nicked, is the purest form of plagiarism, therefore - the sincerest form of flattery!

And so soon after the 'ossuary' thing, he managed to squeeze in a Shogun reference, the day after me (literally the next day!), but I was talking about the MB Games game with the five armies of different-coloured miniature figures, not some nerdy, cerebral time-waster, for a rained-out caravan holiday!

 

It's tragic how threatened or envious he seems to be of what was originally, a completely different Blog, but they increasingly look the same, because he keeps doing what I've already done! In a few years, the only discernable differential between our two Blogs will be that all the eBay scrapings will still be over there, and all the original copy and images (mostly of a [vaguely organised] collection) will still be here!

Anyway, I promise you, you'll never find me making dollies accessories out of hot glue and toothbrush handles, ever, he can keep that! What do you think readers!

S is for Seen Elsewhere - Blue Box Brit's

This weather is draining, and we've taken on a bunch of new postcodes at work, so 90+ miles in a shift, and then home to a too warm/humid room, has reduced my desire to wrestle with word-smithery or image manipulation, but there are still two posts, one each, from Peter and Chris, to come, when I get round to them - it's supposed to be cooler next week!

 

It's funny, on the hottest May day ever recorded (until the next day!) I delivered to a smartish family, two polite kids, attractive couple, nice house, BMW in the drive, they had two office-type fans on stands going, and through the patio windows I could see a two bay gas-fired bar-b-que, I would imagine, they also have a patio heater, for when records aren't being broken, and aspirations to a bigger house and maybe a wee swimming pool . . . They just don't get it, we are literally at risk of going extinct within the lifetimes of people reading this, but let's get more fairy lights in December - Burn baby, burn!

 

Anyways, here's some stuff I put up on a Faceplant group I was on, a couple of years ago, or through '21-24? I can't remember now, probably one was shot and held for a while and the other two were dated 2024;

 

With help from Chris, in one of his more general donations, was a specific gift of the Blue Box mine-detector, as he knew from a previous conversation, or post, that I didn't have a good one! Thanks, Chris!

 

This is the 2021 shot, and as you can see, a distinct lack of operational mine-clearers! Also, the caption became dated when Chris sent me the following image, from his own collection . . . 

 

Which clearly shows two tranches of paint-job, with the probably later set having the brown of the weapons/webbing, replaced with the same black of the boots - to reduce unit-costs, I would imagine? And I think the last time I looked at them there was a third unpainted plastic colour, so a possible 30 to find!

D is for Donation - Chris - Military

Some lovely figures here, and a pair that have driven a follow-up, which will appear out of the current sequence, between this post and the last of the Gogo Crazy Bones posts. I seem to be in an odd rhythm at the moment of blank days and multiple post days, it's pure coincidence really, and it means you don't have to return here daily, but if/when you do, there may be a few posts to catch-up on!

 

A right old mix here, and because we've just seen the Marx 45mm link (in the previous post), here's two more of the possibly candy-holder vehicle/vessel plug-in/twist-in crew, and there's a strange deform behind them who may be a known character, but not known to me!

 

Chris filters out the rack-toy commonality, but sends the interesting ones, and here it's the two metallic olive-drab Airfix American Infantry piracies to the right, the Toy Story / Tim Mee clone to the left, another of the Timpo officer knock-off, and one of the large pound store ones from a few years ago.

 

These two 25mm Marx Miniature Masterpieces had not anticipated the thoroughness with which Royal Fail and/or Parcel Farce would explore their weaknesses and exploit the hell out of them! Sigh! But they were the only casualties this time, and it's bound to happen occasionally, with old figures.

 

A brilliant find, not only is it another WWI American clone from Airfix, not only is it another complete bubble-bottle handle/blower, but it's a new colour, and a new pose, and not just any pose but a prone pose, who, if you save him, after the bubbles end, by separating him (and his base) from the stalk, is now firing at 'planes.

 

And there's a lot of significance to this find. The first two finds (both by me) were in red plastic, if we now have green, we can assume maybe blue, yellow, even/or black? Certainly some other colours, second; we now have three poses, including a prone, so will most of the set be found? Will the wire-party be found as two separate figures?

 

Now if I've ended up with three, after 40-odd years (previous find was over ten years ago), how many centuries will be needed to get a full, or more informative sample?! The hope being that somebody, somewhere, made a decent hash of collecting a load at the time, and that they may turn-up poorly described on feeBay, or undescribed but included in a larger job-lot at a local auction house?

 

Other possibilities which become stronger with this find are that A) Airfix (or General Mills/Heller) might have licensed the figures, or even loaned the old cavities? B) They might be by Dulcop, who by the 1980's had moved out of figures* proper, and into bubble-bottles, in which field they are still globally known. With both the neighbours (Barravelli and Montaplex) also known for producing daft, upright/foot versions of Airfix prone/mounted figures, there is a Mediterranean thread running through the practice?

 

*The Dulcop figures carried by the - then - new, and growing, Plastic Warrior magazine, back in the late 1980's, were specially commissioned by them, and, from the plastic colours, consisted of half old-stock from the warehouse, and half new-runs, for the magazine. 

 

LJN GI's, another nice find, and there will be a follow-up shortly, Chris says the chap on the left is complete, as per the factory, but the chap on the right might not have the correct head, a problem with all these Hong Kong originating figures.

 

Again, I wondered if the poses might be taken from Cofalux or similar (see earlier post), but more on that in the follow-up.

 

These are brilliant too! In bright green they are sometimes (late issues?) the figures from the Lucky/Helen of Toy 'Woods Edge' or 'Tank Trap' comic-offer games, fighting the Ex-Giant Germans, in the mid-greens a common rack-toy figure, and I have a few in yellow/mustard, but I've never seen them in orange, or this blue, and I've never seen them on the runner, or in such a dark green, so quite the find! Copies of the Marx and Blue Box 25mm figures.

 

We saw the modern ones from Corgi Classics here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/t-is-for-tactical-strike-by-corgi.html

 

Right-back at the start of the Blog, but I had no idea there were WWII sets, and the 8th Army chap here, with a side-hat, is more LRDG/SAS than regular infantry, while the German looks to be an older man, possibly in glasses or with a monocle, and maybe Volkssturm?

 

More grist to the mill; I have meant to sort these 1st version Airfix clones out several times, and it's another project for the But is it Giant page (no, they are not Giant!), but it won't be for a while. These are one of the lesser versions I think, with the smooth base undersides.

 

Many thanks to Chris Smith for some very interesting figures. 

L is for Loose Lots - Sandown - Military

Military and ceremonial now, with a few interesting items, one of which is annoying me, but maybe you know what it is, or where they are from, but let's look at the pièce de résistance first!

 

A pretty clean Kentoy stretcher team, I may already have one, but this has good paint, and being new to market is properly 'clean' if you know what I mean, and I think it's a darker brown blanket than my existing sample.

 

I think these may both be duplicates, but I love a bit of [affordable] composition, and we have an 'olin' gunner from Germany, possibly a minor make, or from the budget ranges of one of the big-two, the other, more likely the duplication; it looks familiar, in pumice or plaster, and maybe British or French?

 

This pair are the ones that are bugging me, I'm sure I've seen chapter & verse on them, possibly in one of the glossy mags', but I can't recall, and/or didn't take notes, but equally, it might be on the dongles as an internet download? Poured resin, with wire armatures in the trumpets, I have a feeling they are scenic background for a poured-metal or 'new metal' solid set, from someone like King & Country, Figarti or Frountline?

 

Again, I can't resist a bit of litho-printed tin, when it's affordable, and these were on Steve Vicker's table, I actually picked the six better ones, but he sent the two casualties over, a few minutes later, via a mutual friend who was passing, and, to be honest, the red-coat could replace one of the Germans, if only for a future photograph.

 

From the left we have - I assume - a khaki Brit, two Germans, with possibly an Italian between them, and a couple of Russo-Japanese war types? On the ground are both Brit's I think, and all late 19th/early 20th century, in depiction, beween the two wars, in execution? 

 

Odds - A Timpo horse, which may have started life pulling a wagon or gun, but which has been married to a mounted figure's base, and a Britains Herald Highland officer. All play-worn, but useful spares or 'grist -to-the-mill'!

 

Crescent, with two of the darker-red plastic, behind, and a sand-textured one in front.

 

Not the best (signs of repainting), but a useful comparison shot between two similar poses from Lone Star (black bases) and Britains Herald (green bases), At Ease (left), and Royal Salute (Present Arms), on the right.

 

Cherilea - Highland pipers.

 

I don't think these are repaints, I think this is how Lone Star issued them, with simple, all green kilts, I also think they were on the wants list? So, a useful addition to the massed ranks of the Highland samples.

 

Paints quite good, on these Harald Lifeguards, but sticky fingers have reduced them to 'dirty', so someone had full play-value out of them! Having recently seen Argentinian (?) ceremonials in similar uniforms, they may get a strip and repaint with paler (than the Horse Guards) blue jackets, or something equally exotic from one of the Blandford books?

 

Odds & sods! There's a Skybirds rangefinder (for which the operator has been waiting several decades! https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/s-is-for-skybirds.html), and pilot torso in the left foreground, and various useful 50 and 60-mil fellows from Cherilea, Crescent, Hilco and Britains.

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!

 

 =============================================

 

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