S is for Snowmen

I couldn't leave killer skeletons on top for Christmas, so have a good one and normal service will resume in a week or so! Thanks for visiting.

U is for Undead part 1 - Overview/Comparison

At this time of year, snow on the ground, family in our thoughts, friends round, cards, food, gifts and a real fire, carols on the radio in the background and your favorite comedy on the flickering Cods eye, I find there is nothing quite as festive as the blood-curdling screams of skeletal warriors hacking each other to the last scrap of DNA.

Being serious; when I did the unfinished projects a couple of three weeks ago, there were a few other 'back burners' I'd forgotten and this is one of them. I love the Undead, but I hate Games Workshop, so this group pulls me both ways.

They used to give you 8 warriors for around a fiver, now they give you 5 figures for what? £12-odd? Someone like HaT will sell you 40+ figures for £4.99, yet GW have the global empire...as the Americans would say - Go Figure!

The entire contents of one set, 3 poxy poses, no animation, no arm variations and; are the two on the right injecting steroids into their heads? The whole set appears to have been sculpted in Plasticine with a toothpick and GW are so sure you'll f**k-up the basing, the only spares they give you are 3 extra bases. The kids who buy into this stuff are being taken for a ride by an over confident, arrogant 'Corp', and I sincerely hope the proliferation of new 28mm producers spells the end of their (GW's) hold on the market.

The old sprue, gave you 4 poses, 5 weapon/arm positions (one a spare), separate shields, positionable heads, 5 weapons...did I say 5 weapons...

...sorry, I of course meant 13 different weapon arms, at various angles and attitudes.

The fact that I have a set of the new ones at all is down to GW's reliance on that Corporate American trick, the 'Contents are subject to change or may vary' type thing. I won't make that mistake again. The old one's I buy on eBay as I've tried never to pay full whack for GW.

U is for Undead part 2 - Infantry

Infantry are the backbone of an army, even if it's a rather odd backbone!

The real beauty of the old set was it's almost Historex/Airfix Multi-pose aspect, the little ball socket joints at neck and shoulder made it very easy to produce variation without all those angle joins and filler you would need with more 'solid' figures.

"Cu'mon Mo, drop the sword, putt'em-up, putt'em-up, what's with the helmet woose? I'll take you with one hand behind my back, eh dude? One-on-one, Mano-et-Mano, you Lilly-livered son of a Siberian shit-shoveller"

"Will you just wait there while I find you arm and beat you to death with it"

'Two legs good, four legs better'. I will - one day! - get a bit of filler in his hips to make a better join. Once he had four legs, the head was a natural progression!

Comparison between the grace of the old design and the clay like clumsiness of the new product. QEII is laid up, Concord no longer flies, Digital is no better than Terrestrial with less coverage (Channel 5 will be twenty years old before half the UK are able to get a good picture!) and GW are pedalling backwards with this set!

U is for Undead part 3 - Cavalry

I don't know if cavalry were ever part of the GW 'vision' (another thing I hate about GW, it's their rules or no play today kiddo!), I've certainly never found mounted legs, but as they are skeletal all you have to do is bend the legs in a bit, add a touch of glue and Bob's your fleshless Uncle!

Defending against Cavalry attack, I wish now I'd left the shield off, it's going to whack his leg when he brings the sword over his head! The other guy cowers quite convincingly though.

If you're going to put a horned horses head on a four legged man, you might as well put the mans head on the horse/cow body...No?

More of the same, sadly there was only the one pose of this animal and I didn't try much with it until I started the chariot.

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!!