D is for Don't Forget The Best Toy Soldier Show On Earth!

It's the 39th year - ignoring the hiatus of SARS-Covid19  - of the Plastic Warrior magazine's toy soldier show tomorrow, and I know for a fact a couple of new table holders have sorted out piles of new to market stuff, and other people have sorted out equally good stuff, so there's going to be lots of stuff! If you're looking for toy soldier stuff, you'll want to be there, you need to be there!

 

The next Twicker's match is first of June, so we should be safe from rugger-bugger's and there'll be plenty of parking. Gareth reported a rail replacement bus service to Whitton -

 

Replacement rail bus, Saturday.
If travelling on the train from London there is a bus service

from Feltham to Whitton

So worth setting out a bit earlier if that was your intended mode of ingress! All other details are on Brian Carrick's page - 

https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/2024/05/plastic-warrior-show-2024.html

To get us in the mood, here's a few shots I found languishing in a folder in Picasa, taken at the 2018 show.

 

Vehicles.

 

 

Timpo and early British bits.

Gun-line!

Steve Weston's tables, he'd started packing-up.

I bought the chariot . . . the next year!

Elastolin fort and their 40mm figures.

Britains Herald & Deetail

 

Jean stagecoach and two East German sets

(Georg Blechschmidt KG or Friedhold Fischer KG,

I think it's GB figures in FF boxes?)
 

Hope you make it, I'll be there, and I shouldn't be, far too much, more serious stuff happening in real life, right now, but you can't keep an addict down!

PW is for Plastic Warrior Show - 4 of 5

Carrying on with a few more show purchases, two more from the shopping list and a couple of big bags of 'Junk', which always have something useful in them!

The Britains Naval gun wasn't exactly on the shopping list, but I knew I needed it and when I saw a cheap one I grabbed it! The green jeep was a pleasant surprise as I though after deals with Ed Berg and Ken Taylor that I'd pretty-much nailed the Gilmark US Army stuff, but there it was, sat there!

While the grey jeep is a bit knocked-about, but it has a tin-plate boxed push-&-go mechanism underneath and while the trailer needs wheels, it's three delicate polystyrene drawbars are intact, and it was going cheap, so I figured I'd grab in with a view to cannibalising it or the next one I find to get a good one?

Ah-yes! These are obviously Elastolin (40mm, not 70), and they weren't terribly cheap, in fact I'll tell you, they were £33? But I though, they ARE Elastolin and there's three different horses, and you come to a show to buy nice things, as well as ticking-off items on your little shopping list, you want something 'nice', to show for the day, so I bought them.

Now, you'll see that one of them looks a bit odd . . . he's bright blue and orange!, but I can assure you that's what he's supposed to look like, because, while the seller had a nice little label, all marked-up "Elastolin medievals Germany £33" or something, he'd neglected to mention, and I didn't notice 'till I'd paid, that . . .

. . . all bar the blue guys horse (which is Elastolin) are heat stamped (horses) or extra-marked Historex (France!), so these are literally re-badged Franco-German Elastolin, and despite the duplicates, I think I got a bargain? I don't know, they may be commoner, or less rated and while I think I have another one somewhere, it's only one, now I have a sample, with some foot swaps! The fighters are all the same pose (hand painted castle shields), but have three different weapons between them, so make a good exhibition mêlée, as you can see!

The blue guy though . . . might he be Ougan? He's a bit leerier than the others and I think they did do some simplified-paint Elastolin's at some point, I have gloss-painted Romans which are from them I'm told?

So the other two things which were on my conscious shopping-list, were the Persian Chariot from Expeditionary Force I'd seen  a few years ago on Steve Weston's stall, and he managed to find one, so that came home with me and will be a separate post, once I've put it together! The other was the Magnificent Seven, which I'd only added to the list a few nights before the show, when Mannie Gentile posted them - a really excellent post. And Steve managed to find then too!

While I was in that corner of the Hall and Steve was looking for the other two, I was chatting to Peter Cole and bought his new Replicants offering, two sets of cavalry pairs - all US Dragoons, these were so new there was nothing about them on the websites Sunday/Monday, but they are now listed on Steve's site. Link will be temporary.

I then remembered that another Replicants item on the 'back burner' shopping list was the 'youth movement' set Peter did years ago, and he had one of those too, so I returned from that corner with all the above! I have a couple somewhere, the punk I think, in yellow, and mentioned it to Peter who explained there were two issues with colour changes, so this is the second version, with one or two of the earlier ones somewhere in the stash!

The big bag, bottom right seems to be a complete set of the Hing Fat knights, most of which I think Peter Evans has sent to the blog in previous 'red cross parcels', but this set has three horses, and it'll enable me to paint a few duplicates up one day, if the fancy takes me!

This was a bag of shite, and I'm sure the seller won't mind me saying so, as he'd as good as put it on the label! But, it was only three quid, and had some useful stuff . . . for ITLAPD! Although I shot a few pieces for this post.

Not sure if we've seen these loose, or even of we've seen them at all, and they could take their pick of Halloween or ITLAPD, but I think there'll be more to come on them so they can go here for now!

These three were also in the bag, I've seen the little one before and may have it somewhere, the red one looks like the sort of thing you might get on a small card Sellotape'd to a kids magazine while the grey one could be Technolog? They used to include leery green and gold ones in their figure sets as a fun bit of extra playability, this is a more sober colourway, but may be newer?

The small one has a hard plastic (probably polypropylene) barrel and a PVC body, and clicks from elevated to level, the grey one has full elevation and a button-fire mechanism for push-in rod-ammo.

We've actually seen this before, with a less bent muzzle, I'll have to treat him with care and respect! Adrian found him near the end of the show, and he came home with me. Funny, I've discussed them before and how the three 'Terra Nova' figures only exist as test shots in the legendary James Opie's collection, but while this chap keeps turning-up (occasionally) you never find the other two? Kentoys rare Space Police Commando crawling.

Although one of the last things to be photographed, this bag was given to me by Brain Carrick at about the same time Peter Evans and Graham Apperley gave me their bags, so they were all in pile in my mitts at one point! It may be junk, but it had some useful stuff and gap-fillers nevertheless!

I didn't shoot everything I kept, these two shots actually go after the first sequence in the next post, but to keep them all at ten images I moved these, in fact I had started putting away by the time I got to this bag as Bosey-Boy is more, err, spready than his Mum used to be so I was running out of room on the bed . . . did I say bed? I mean dedicated sorting area! And it was peeing down with rain all Sunday afternoon so BB was going absolutely nowhere! He gets bitey-fightey if I try to inch him anywhere!

But, there's still some stuff to mention, not least that rather nice Buffalo-Bison, it's an odd grey (Wisent?) colour, but with the maybe Spanish one (see first of these posts); two new to me from one show! the 8^th Army are Rado/Ri-Toys, and if the large scale are anything like the small scale there will be many shades, so I've hung on to them to compare with whatever I already have.

The rack toy Police are new I think, and while broken, the Totem Pole is new, in a ridged PVC or even softish 'styrene (the tip has snapped off), it's a copy of the old Britains one we looked at here. While the bright red PVC version of an older Hong Kong tree will be useful with photographing Magic Roundabout premiums at some point!

A Quaker trident-gladiator (retarius), sans trident, a slightly bent Hornby HO horse (compare with the O horse in post 2-image 6) and an odd alien were selected, three paratroopers and some other rack-toy types, all good stuff and thanks again to Brian.

Part 5 next.

PW4 is for Polymer Player Paul Plucks Plastic Plectrum in Purple Pumps!

Or R is for Rockola, Replicants and Ruddy Hell; He's Only Gorn and Touched the Big Seven-Oh!

One of the nicest surprises at the PW show was a special figure from Peter Cole at Replicants, made to celebrate the 70th year (or 70's years?!!) of our estimable editor and all-round good-egg; Paul Morehead. The surprise being shared between both attendees and Mr. Morehead who had no idea the figure was going to be there!

Groovey-Scot Farmer of the Applegate Experience - '67 man!

Peter and Paul have been close since long-before I've been getting Plastic Warrior magazine, each helping the other with their respective projects and problems, whether practical . . . sculpting and moulding plastics, or historical; where Britains and Herald have dominated, so I think it's really nice that Peter went to this much trouble.

And, I don't know who painted the figure but look at that face  - that's Paul . . . with sideburns!

As if there was any doubt; the tale was explained on a little info-card on the day, and figures were available for sale for those of us who needed a voodoo pin-cushion! Joking! To be fair he hasn't changed that much, but if I had the chance to judge for myself, I missed it, as he only told me he'd gigged a pub round the corner, after the event!

I bought one! I'm going to have a stab at painting it at some point, but something a little more subdued than the show-sample, leather and denim maybe?

Should still be available from Weston's ToySoldier & Musician's Emporium

Paul Rocks!

I done did a .gif! This is it! It needed a scaler, or at least I thought so, Mr Morehead clearly had other ideas about sharing the stage with a berserker!

A few close-ups of the axe-man, out of the pack, there's quite a large undercut filled-in behind the gwi'tar but it looks easy enough to trim back and will be below the eye-line in any normal event, unless you mount/display it way above head-hight!

"How much did I drink last night?"

The word on the street is that 'Pluckin' Paul' would play '...any band, for beer!', and this old archive image of him and Hillbert Grape backing for Bat Fink & The Screamer at the Teamster stadium in Toytown, Toysylvania would seem to go some way to proving the truth of that particular rumour!

N is for Newsflash! New Replicants Figures Hit the Streets . . . or should that be 'Hit the Plains'!

The new figures from Replicants were on show today and wow, what a line-up, available from Steve Weston's - presumably from tomorrow - if you didn't manage to make it to the show.

Here's a little preview I knocked-up this ar'vo! I will hopefully do a better review later in the week or the week after maybe, so much to do!

News, Views Etc . . . Show Report - Plastic Warrior's 32nd Toy Soldier Show; Twickenham, London, 13th May 2017

Oh no! I lost the 'who can get a show report out first' competitive-blogging race for the umpteenth-year running, anyone would think I wasn't playing!

I don't know if anyone told you there was a toy soldier show at the weekend; best in the world, so commiserations if you missed it, but a brief resume of the day needs to start with the weather which threatened to be damp and drizzly, and started as such, but about the time the tables turned-up it had started clearing, and continued to improve to the point where we had the post-show 'autopsy' chin-wag on the lawn, in shirts, with tea and bisk'wuits!

Paul Morehead, the inimitable editor of Plastic Warrior was pleased with the turn-out, and table-space was over-subscribed in the end (so dealers: book early for next year!), while I thought the show stayed busy for longer than some years, with quite a buzz 'till well after lunch. I spoke to several stall-holders who'd all had a good day and I think everyone found something they needed, wanted or liked the look or price of!

As well as the two new 'specials' shown here on Friday evening last, the show was also the launching-point for the usual (or 'annual'!) new release from Peter Cole at Replicants and this year's was a delight; four Comanche warriors. I did take the middle image with Peter and the Westons in the background, but it was not the most flattering shot I've taken of him, so I hope he'll forgive me for cropping out the wider angles!

Wonderfully animated figures, with Peter's natural style to the fore, I particularly like the charging guy, reminiscent of the old Britains Swoppet chap, but while the Britains pose always looked to be dancing, Peter's 'local resident' is clearly bearing down on an illegal migrant from across the pond - with intent!

The archer reaching for a second arrow is nice, the kneeling firer is a very well observed pose while the rather gruesome scalping vignette has the perpetrator standing on a victim who - while wearing a fringed jacket - has few other defining details (and not much hair!) so can be painted up as a cowboy/settler/backwoodsman, or another - rival tribe - Indian. He could even be given US Army (cavalry) blue trousers with a nice yella' stripe down the seam - if only the natives had had a wall . . . a really big wall folks!

Also on sale at the show, and still available from Replicants' retail-agents (Steve Weston's Toy Soldiers) were the last set of figures from 21^st Century. They were described as 'WWII British' in the last Plastic Warrior, but are really British Paratroops, equipped as per post-D-Day, and might like to have their smocks repainted to reflect the Denison scheme.

Their helmets also being wrong for infantry as they are neither the old rimmed 'Tommy' or 'Brodie' (as the Yanks called it) nor having the distinctive shape of the Guards Brigade's MkIII 'Turtles', and as well as having the look of the Para-helmet, they have the chin-strap for it. However a couple of the figures are in other headdress, shirt or jumper, so are a bit more flexible.

However they're very good, highly detailed sculpts which would benefit from further paint whoever they were representing. The Bren-gun's magazine on one of mine needs a hot-water treatment to straighten it, but otherwise lovely figures which may prove hard to get in the future, so grab them now!

Five bags of other plunder were returned to Smallscaleworld Towers and their contents will feature in a future post.

The big difference this year was a lack of European visitors, most of the German faces were there as always, but the French and Belgians were missing, as were all but one of the Portuguese? I don't know if this was a Brexit thing, a currency thing or just a busy weekend for events elsewhere.

I hope it's due to developing support structures for the hobby in other places reducing the necessity to drag one's arse to Blighty - certainly it seems the French hobby has progressed a lot in recent years, and that means someone is digging-out and saving the stuff there, so it can in turn find it's way to evilBay for everyone to have a punt at! It didn't seem to effect attendance, and only time will tell if it's part of a trend or just a one-off?

Finally . . . 

Blimey! It's only less than a blinking year until the next Plastic Warrior magazine's Toy Soldier Show, the best toy soldier show in the world!

P is for Plastic Warrior's 31st Show - Show Report

So to the Twickenham 'Boarders' in the posher hinterlands of South-West London, two-weeks ago, for the 31st Annual Plastic Warrior show, primarily organised for the readers of PW's magazine although the odd non-subscribers are allowed in!*

There was a slight delay with the arrival of the tables, but memory serves that with three shows, now, at this venue, the late arrival of the tables has become a time-honored, timeless, every-time tradition, to be much looked-forward too, again, this time next year! And it took less than three minutes to unload . . . and it's a 'club' event . . . and . . .

Welcoming committee: on the left PW's erstwhile editor Paul Morehead looking like he needs a coffee! With one of the 'seven pillars' of the readership on the right; Barrie Blood; looking like he's had too many coffees...you're not supposed to drink it through a straw, it goes straight to your head . . . I'm told!

The first stall you encountered was Barney Brown's, and having failed to get a good candid shot of him, I got him to pose and still failed to get a good shot, sorry Barney, I think the Macro was still on! He's holding the retro packaging he's developed for selling his better quality figures, which some of you may have seen on feeBay.

Peter Bergner had a large stall (well, better call it a 'stockade' did I do that joke last year? Doh!) in the centre of the room, and is seen here with his rummage boxes, from which I had earlier plundered a nice handful of eclectic stuff. He also had a lot of new boxed figures such as Technolog from Russia and other delights including a range of casualties and other prone or seated figures in resin, I didn't get the name of the company.

Down the bottom corner of the venue was to be found Peter Cole of Replicants, here looking very pleased with his new Smugglers (reviewed in Plastic Warrior No.160 - subscribe here) and even newer - 20th anniversary of Replicants - Highwayman, he also had a nice pair of equally new clerics (Medieval Monk and Nun), which I bought.

I believe the little vignette / dioramas he displays the new figures on are his own efforts, I didn't ask, but having seen his English Civil War work, I'm guessing they're from his hand as well; the church façade was particularly nice with its gothic windows.

Next to him were his agents for day-to-day sales, Steve Weston's Toy Soldiers, who also carry a lot of the newer company's products here in the UK. of course it's really Steve and Lynda Weston's Toy Soldiers! . . . and here Lynda is seen 'guarding the fort' [Kandahar!], but look at all those figures . . . I'm glad I wasn't the one tasked with setting them all up!

Adrian Little had these new-production runners of Timpo G.I.s on offer, they are from Steve Morris - one of the Brummie contingent (who always turn-up good stuff), and he has found the moulds and got them back into production, I don't have sales/contact details for him; if anyone does, let us know. But they will be turning up at shows and things I'm sure, or you can try Mercator.

Chatting to stallholders at the end, it was deemed a good day, and packing-up was a bit later than usual, so clearly some last-minute transactions kept the 'buzz' going, not that it's just about the plunder sales, meeting old friends, catching-up, being shown rarities, having more knowledgeable mates ID stuff, hearing the gossip and rumours, it all helps make the day. So it's roll-on the 32nd show - less than a year away now!

*Of course everyone is welcome as long as they have the entry fee, strength in their legs and a big bag, or bags - I needed three . . . and a bit!

For those who don't like show-reports, I've posted some aluminium below, or click 'older post'. I've also added a vintage plastic puzzle Humpty-Dumpty to the jig toys page.

1st June 2016 - Paul emailed me to explain: "The dioramas are built for Replicants by Dan Morgan, another regular PW contributor", so; Nice diorama's Dan!