U is for Undead part 4 - Armour

Some pictures of an Undead Chariot

Some more (with the pose changes to the draft-animal)

It's...yeah, more pictures of the same!

A is for ACW Armies All right After All this time

This is my old war gaming army, dating from when I was about 13 and Humbrol Authenticolours were mythical things other, older, richer people possessed! I played with mys......er...it was an exercise in solo war gaming!

These are the two armies in their drawer, they were small, but then by the reckoning of all these DBA, DBB, DBC and CBEEBIES that people play now, they look a little on the large side!

Confederate Volunteers skirmish irregularly, while more formal units form up behind, the Terrance Wise school says use union for confederates, as they wore what they could, and both sides had kepi's, a fact thankfully reflected in more recent issues by newer companies.

The gun/s (and crews?) have been here before, but if I'm blowing the dust from an old closet, you might as well see it warts and all, massacred the Hinchliffe British Colonial Gatling Gun, gave the Union cavalryman a Napoleonic saddle AND check out the cowboy!! I was always quite pleased with the CSA General from the Civilians set, Grant was Hinchliffe...but not necessarily their 'Grant'! Crews were converted from Atlantic Gold Diggers and Hong Kong Cowboys

Scratch-built transport. You see, it was about wagons all along! The union force got a sort of engineer/blacksmith/tool shop wagon made out of heavy-duty poly-strip, and another old man from the civilian set, not to mention more Napoleonic horses! Confederates were issued with a prairie schooner and a water-cart, I also built a small cannon mount, which would probably look more at home on the walls of the Alamo.

Union troops stand firm, I would find a colour scheme I liked the look of - usually from a Blandford Colour Guide, which explains the 34th Right Royal Leprechauns in the second row! But I'm not repainting them now, they're part of my childhood!

The last thing I did before '...putting away my childish things' and going off to join our army was buy a box each of the two then NEW Esci sets, the officers, flag bearers and buglers all joined my army first!.

Cottage in the Village

Well, a years gone by and I haven't fed this blog as I intended to, hey-ho, maybe this year! Took this about 20 minutes ago at the other end of the village, picture postcard or what! Happy Christmas to those still reading this...?

The Worlds Favorite Airline!

We all shoot ourselves in the foot from time to time, but shooting yourself in both feet? and then using the holes to nail yourself to the floor? Well done BA management, here we are thoroughly pissed off, with Bankers (most - if not all of them!), Politicians (after Copenhagen most, if not all of them), the weather, the Channel Tunnel (and EurotrainnottunnelCoLtd.), raising taxes, higher charges for water and electricity (after two decades of payments to Shareholders), roads that are as bad as they have ever been...and what do you do? Fire the first shot in a potential 'Winter of Discontent II' while what's left of the armed forces (who did or delivered everything last time) are over-worked and underfunded, thousands of miles away!

Browntrousers - You really think you're gonna get a second term?

Pink Lego

Three cheers to the person who put the pink Lego brick, in James May's house, the programme hasn't finished yet and he's all ready annoyed me at least 3 times...It's a Kiddycraft design and they won the court case to prove it! Stop using taxpayers money to produce 1 hour adverts for companies who's products you don't understand!

L is for Like LEGO - But Impossible!

Bought this on eBay the other day, I have a soft spot for Lego, and having been talked into selling half mine for bugger-all-money following a flood in my storage unit, I'm now clearing the rest on eBay, but still have a vague interest in the stuff and things related to it.

First inspection looked promising, hard to tell whether it was German or Swiss, but my guess is one or the other (so - knowing my guesses it's probably Dutch!), very well engineered but immediately it became apparent that for such a simple looking vehicle (in the photo on the box it seems to be more simple than the classic 1970's Legoland trucks) there were an awful lot of very small pieces.

These are they. The pile of tiles and number of white junction-bricks led me to believe they had provided spares to help the budding Lego traitor explore his imagination with this new system, I was wrong, although the instruction sheet tried hard to keep me in the dark!

To build one of the old Legoland articulated trucks would take me five or ten minutes, I would use everything in the box except the one or two spares they always provided of the very smallest pieces, and the finished model would look just like the pictures/drawings on the box.

This photograph is the result of about 8 hours work over two evenings, some of the bits left in the pile of 'spares' should actually be on the vehicle, but where is anybodies guess. It took over an hour to get the layer of protective wax off the 6 tyres (and the carpet will never be the same), the fifth-wheel arrangement is not right, and the whole thing was 30% guess work as the instructions are clearly - less than clear.

Add to that, the wheels stick out like a wide load and the whole thing is less realistic than the crudest of eary 70's Lego vehicles.

Yeh...Baks...or Herbert, or Herbert by Baks, the system you've never heard of because they produced an over-engineered product with instructions you couldn't follow, aimed at an age group who couldn't have dealt with it, and hoped it would knock Lego off it's perch!

H is for Happy Christmas

A is for "And now for something completely different"

This might not look like it, but IS - another festive post! These were given away in Christmas Crackers, as if they'd be found anywhere else!

Being among the most frightful figures in my collection, these do bare more than a passing resemblance to some large scale (100mm?) comic characters originating in - I think - Europe which included a clown, or even some of the Marx 'Nutty' biggies. Likewise there were the Wierd-o's kits issued by several companies under one title or another. Clearly the tail end of some odd late 60's/70's fad for over the top caricatures! 35mm give-or-take.

L is for Lazy Post - again!

Tired and busy, so another quick dip into the archive;

First up is a close up of the two moulding variants of the Herald/Britains Robin Hood figure, note the feather.

A comparison shot similar to the one I showed when covering the WWII range with Tudor Rose a while ago, but with other figures. From left to right; Holgar Ericson 20mm for Comet/Authenticast, US 'Grunt'; Spencer Smith 25mm ACW Confederate/Slouch Hat; Spencer Smith 25mm 'Connoisseur Range'; SAE/Swedish African Engineers 30mm ECW musketeer.

Gratuitous shot of three Giant chariots!

F is for Festive Post (Festival; Part 1)

And a Merry Christmas to all our readers, 1,500 in 30 days, thanks to all. Thought I'd do a bit of a seasonal post today, and look at one of the more obscure British producers - Festival.

The figures they are most noted for, known as 'Snow-babies'. These are vaguely 1950's kids in generic woollen/kapok? romper suits enjoying the snow, and were primarily designed to attend the Royal Icing of an Empire-standard, stiff-upper-lipped, rock hard, log of Christmas Cake, hey, don't argue, people did themselves injuries trying to cut into those things, knives were broken and teeth were lost, once entry had been forced - due to post war privations the 'icing' was - I think - in fact a semi-edible concrete!

The normal colour was white with red gloves and blue boots, the Yellow one is probably a late production eye-catcher?

Two styrene HK copies of the Festival poses, and a Muttley the Dog from the 'Wacky Races' and 'Catch that Pigeon' (is that what the off-shoot was called? Dick Dastardly?) T.V. cartoons. Muttly came with the marked Festival sled he's lying on, yet he is in a quite solid vinyl, not a Festival material at all, however he fits the sled perfectly, so I suspect Festival bought him in (possibly on commission) from someone like Bully or Heimo in order to take advantage of a popular slice of Watch With Mother. [04/03/2012 - He's Corgi! just happens to fit the Festival sledge!]

The Festival Santa's with an HK copy top right, the copy is again in a hard styrene. The sledge rider is in two distinct versions, one (far right) much deeper than the other (riding), I tried to show this in the photo, but fear I failed! It also has a different fixing system, the left-hand one is glued on, while the right-hand one has a locating-stud type feature.

F is for Festival Part 2

The bulk of Festival's range was aimed squarely at cake decoration, and the vast majority of that seems to have been Christmas cakes, here are more seasonal offerings, all marked with the festival brand. The stag has been much copied over the years, one enterprising HK producer even making a reverse image. Hard styrene copies of the snowman are common.

The wagon is a recent eBay acquisition and prompted these articles, the little 'Queen' has a locating stud in her back and is probably a fairy sans-wings. Cupid was presumably aimed at budget wedding cakes, while the hard plastic robins seem to have been bought in from HK, indeed the log appears to have been designed to take an already common stand-alone feature of Crimbo-cake decorating since the pre-war days of imported highly toxic lead decorations from German catering suppliers.

Festival were also responsible for a lot of the miniature candle holders that were such a feature of our - certainly my - childhood. Here are a couple of sets still in the packs. The logo on the trains is the mark visible on the bases of all the non HK figures & undersides of the sledges in the above two posts. I would like to point out that the trains my brother and I had were the same as the cars, NOT pink!!

B is for Blue Box

A bit of a teaser of things to come, Blue box had this 'layer' thing going on, the more layers the higher the price bracket, the mega level was a four tier two vehicle wide set, so lets look at one...

This set manages to cover all the bases, copies of Britains Kahki Infantry, Merten Sailors, TriangMinic ships, their own 45mm US Infantry, Crescent 54mm Artillery, Roco Patton, Marx sandbag defence, MPC minis aircraft...someone else's helicopter...Yep, Blue Box really knew how to rip-off a design or two! Four tier sets exist for the civilian range as well, usually with a mix of Matchbox/Corgi/Dinky in the same box!

Similar contents on a carded - probably later - set, the soft plastic figures used here were also issued by late Marx, adding to my contention (in a series for Plastic Warrior magazine's One Inch Warrior off-shoot - see Vol. 10 & 11) that at least one of the Blue Box factories was supplying Marx (the same factory that took over Beeju's production).

These are the piracy's of the Merten Sailors quite enlarged (the originals were HO scale 18/20mm) and are among the less common Blue Box to track down - at least they are loose, in mint sets like these they are easier to find.

Close up of the more common Blue Box items, the lorry is a Bedford RL, they also made a later Bedford MK and both took all manor of body types, this flat bed being the most often encountered, with various plug-in accessories, but there were Ambulance and GS bodies as well. The RL was probably based on the Dinky truck, but the MK is considered to be a Blue Box original.

Note also the artillery shell sprue tucked behind the gun, this turns up on eBay as 'Unknown Toy Gun Bullets' or similar from time to time.

More to come....

S is for Spacex (LB part 1)

Starting at the end, or ending at the start...if you've been following them! The most collected, but to a certain extent also the most common, the 25mm range, although they're not all the same size, nothing so easy from the HK producers. Marketed by Triang in the UK, and in the US by Multiple Toy Makers as Golden Astronaut, but all (most?) made by Lik Be - LB.

From the top; Hard plastic gunmetal, soft plastic gunmetal, Hard plastic chrome silver, hard plastic chromed gold, hard plastic white. All carry the LB mark except the silvered chrome ones and the four at the bottom and these may be the ones by Hover (a HK for the US company producing similar Spacex stuff), Blue Box or similar. Those last four have been painted by the owner.

Note; The white ones and the top row are taller than the others by about 1.5 mm, while the unmarked ones are chunkier mouldings. Gold Chrome are Spacex, the others were mostly carded HK stuff and/or cake decorations, available via Culpitts and similar.

These are the extra figures available with Spacex and Golden Astronaut sets, the four to the left being based on MPC 5 inch figures, the two to the right being based on MPC 50mm figures. The silver one above the row is what happens when you leave them in the sun, not a deliberate silver chromed figure. While the one below the row may have had is chrome stripped, if not he's quite unusual, being made of that 1950's type (mixed granules) plastic? These were never marked, but were sold mixed with LB marked figures in the Spacex/GA ranges.

An incomplete collection of the Triang smaller vehicles, each had 1 figure, so with 50% being the common LB designs, you had to buy a lot to get all the MPC poses (which is why I only have 5 decent examples, and one who's been in the wars!).

Three others, loose, I could list them all, but you're far better off going to Project Moonbase. Presumably in the 21st Century (later, much later!) we will palletise all goods on hover pallets, doing away with the need for two long thin arms on fork-lifts/pallet trucks?

Since corrected to Lik Be / LB.

O is for Other Things (LB part 2)

Tying up a few loose ends, with LB and others, the aim will be to rename the last few and next few posts so that they are in some sort of order and can be found together in the future.

These are all 6 poses of the Robots in small scale (25mm), with slight variants, the gunmetal being soft ethylene, the chromium-plated one's like their 54mm brethren are a hard styrene, most a neutral grayish, but the lower fat one can be seen to be an emerald green under the chrome. The lower 'biker' is yet another unfinished project of mine, undercoat and mapping pen highlights wait for a blue (Police?) wash and tyres, while the upper fish head seems to have factory painted eyes?

These astronauts are unmarked, but the base is very similar to the LB marked Robots and both were still being sold from cake decorating display stands in the late 1990's, so inclusion here is guaranteed, there are only the two poses.

These divers are also marked LB and were probably sold as fish-tank decoration as well as for cakes. I don't know if this was all of them, and they (Lik Be) are probably responsible for some of the older sharks and octopi that turn up in mixed lots from time to time?

Two more marked LB, now, Culpitts carried the astronauts by Lik Be, but tended to move Gemodels product when it came sports and pastime figures, or the HK copies of same. Were these released in direct competition with one of their main clients, or did Culpitts carry these as well? And...How many more were there in this set/series, 6/8?

Both these and the divers are approximately 45mm, polyethylene.

A colour variation that came to light courtesy of wishes to remain annonymous, paint remains show a common scheme of green base, blue belt and gold helmet.

A Mikephil carded set, these are standard marked figures, the vehicles are very similar to the ones below, but slightly different, slightly more detailed/complicated. Of interest; they are not vehicles issued with Spacex or Golden Astronauts. Roco give up their Pz.IV, or at least the chassis again!

Since corrected to Lik Be / LB.

P is for Pirates (LB part 3)

Because all the HK guys were centred on the same region of the colony, when they did produce unique designs - not often, but it did happen occasionally - they would immediately be copied by all their rivals, so dozens of piracies exist; Blue Box suffer from a lot of copying, these LB figures, Corgi's late figure production and so on.

Here we have a white figure almost the same size as the 54mm originals, but with a hollowed out base, either side of him some unmarked silver figures around 45mm with similar but slightly heavier mouldings in the same size but multicoloured above.

The bottom row from left to right; quite accurate copies of the small scale figures, then a very heavy-set chap in silver, and an intermediate bunch to finish. All - again - unmarked, all around 25mm.

The figures in this 'Acrobatic Team' carded set are marked with a small 'HONG KONG' as are the 'planes, I particularly like these aircraft, as while being based on 1950/60's Cold War machines, they could - with a bit of paint - pass for 'Atmosphere Craft' of the Trigan Empire or some of their allies or enemies.

Now why has no one exploited that franchise!? The loose craft bottom right is a moulding failure, but with such symmetry to the missing wing-tips, he makes a whole new variant!

Silicone rubber sucker / window stick-on's of the robots

Some vehicles that have accompanied some of the lots the above figures came in, they may or may not be connected, wheels are very like some Blue Box wheels? The pilots are straight copies of the pilots from the Triang Spacex range.

Since corrected to Lik Be / LB.