S is for Statuary

One of the best ways to 'set the scene' whether on a war-games table or a display shelf is with the use of era-specific scenery, and what better for that than with a bit of monumental masonry!

Here we see Sphinxes for Egypt, the upper one is a touristy thing from a museum gift shop by an unknown maker, here being fought over by a couple of Caesar's Mycenaean troops, what they're doing in Egypt is anyone's guess, but they looked the part and were the first thing to hand!

Below them are two sizes of Sphinx being scaled with the old Atlantic Egyptians, the maker is sort of unknown...I bought them from the chap who always does Andy Harfield's show in Kent, if anyone knows his name let me know and I'll update this post.

The Romano-Greek period is much easier to accommodate as there are plenty of figures to paint-up from the larger scales as I have done here - on the right - with a Britains Herald Trojan. Figures are Quaker Gladiators also issued by Tom Smith and I'll be covering these soon, but PSR will have them first.

To the left is a Matchbox center-piece from the Counter Attack play set. He has some HK copies of the Giant/Baravelli Romans (based on the Britains Trojans!) parading past.

Finally a fine piece of Victorian/Wilhelmian colonial corporate town-center statuary, in this case from something like a Polly Pocket set, it needs a good paint and weathering to make it more presentable, but again you could use a 40-70mm mounted figure to produce something much better, or indeed an animal, imagine a big bear on it's hind legs in some German town as your Shermans thunder past!

News, views etc...Basic HTML for Blogs, Forums etc...

Might be of some use to some people? I know it took me ages back in 2008 to discover all this. The last three also work in comment boxes on Blogger/Blogspots.

Black text is explanatory, blue text is the required code - type in the normal way, green text is where you paste links, khaki text is were you type the text of your choice (the bit that will appear as a 'hot-link' in a different colour to the rest of the text after you publish (mid-blue is the default, if you haven't chosen another colour in 'layout').

If you enlarge it and print it out, you can pin it next to the PC and it'll always be there when you need it. The important thing to remember is the 'closing code' needs to have the forward slash before the a,b,i, or u. Otherwise you will turn the rest of the text, article or comment into a hot link or underline it all!

A bit of seasonal wildlife!

Well, that Hedgehog I woke in November while re-building the sheds, came and forgave me the other evening, just as I drew up in my new (old!) car, so I jammed-on the anchors and shot out with the camera ready and got a couple of good shots off before he/she (I'm sure it's a 'she' but have no idea why!) dived under the hedge behind!

Driving up the lane the other lunchtime these lot were crossing the road, so again; Brakes on, pocket, camera, and got this half-decent long-shot as they followed the hedge-line at the other side of the field.

These were all over the place about a week-and-a-half ago, most were hanging out of Holly trees in a heavily wooded area. while several ended-up on my jumper! One was on a lime tree having a good nosh, and the other was climbing an ash, don't know what they are - could be a moth, or one of the Whites? Looking at the book it could be a Small Heath or one of the Browns...

These are the calves of a rare breed a Farmer has in a field over by one of my clients places near Brightwalton, they did look even sweeter three weeks ago, little four-legged baby-bears, but they are starting to look like cows now! Couldn't get a photo the first time I saw them. I think they are 'Highland Long-horns' but I'm no cattle expert...

...except to say that Aberdeen Angus raised on natural pasture above island cliffs make the best roast I've ever tasted, marbled with crispy yellow veins of fat...mmmmm, not Matterson's!

V is for Vac-forms, Part 1 - Airfix & Atlantic

Vac-forms (for; Vacuum-Formed) have been an integral part of the modeling and war-gaming scene since quite early in it's inception, and for AFV modelers, dioramists and war-gamers they have produced a wide variety of items to enhance a scene or provide authentic (or not so authentic) background to the gaming table.

From the Sublime (2 foot by 3 foot play bases from Bellona) to the ridiculous (horrid little plinths from er...Bellona!), this is my take on them, it's a three-part'er, so keep scrolling when you get to the end of this post!

Airfix, and their partner in the US (MPC) produced quite a number of vac-forms over the years, and indeed are doing so again. This is from the Battlefront play-set El Alamien, Allied Attack Force, and is presented - for your ridicule - as painted by my younger self, some 30 odd years ago! In front of which you can see two plaster-of-paris moulds I took of the revetments, in order I should protect a few more AFV's from the German Paratroop Officer (who was always 'last man standing'!), the funny thing about taking mouldings from Vac-forms is; they end up with better detail, as vac-forms are 'pulled' onto a former (by vacuum - of course!) so end up with the finer detail of the master on the underside, consequently taking a negative cast provides better mouldings with less rounding/smoothing-off of detail.

More Airfix, more plaster casts, more ridicule to be poured on my teenage colour schemes! The beauty of these plaster moulds was that as/when they got chipped (or miscast) I just brushed in a bit more mud or dirt, and when they broke, I could either glue them or make them into a smaller defence work, hence the little one-man thing on the left-hand end. These are all taken from the storage sheds and Sand-bagged post in the Forward Command Post (CP) set.

Top right are actually Bellona, who are dealt with in the next post down. Note how the original painted sandbag guard-post is shot-to-bits with cracks, the Airfix vac-forms were among the thinnest in the business. Basing - as in the pile of stores from Bellona makes for a much more rigid plaything.

About fifteen years ago I tried to cast the Cantina from the AMT/MPC/Airfix Star Wars vac-formed play-set base (made far more substantially than the earlier stuff), but thought I'd be clever by using wall-plaster mixed with PVA/wood-glue and water at a 1:1 ratio, six months later it was still damp, and I managed to destroy both the moulding and the base, separating one from the other! Still, if you don't try, you don't learn...Airfix purists would hate to know what I've done to boxes over the years teaching myself how to renovate them, Ha-hah!

Atlantic were also a prolific maker of 'value-added' bases, and painted theirs to boot! If you call that 'painting'? These are from the medium-sized sets of Wild West, and were designed to fit together as they are photographed. Inside the fold-out cover of the box, there is an illustration suggesting a 1E and 1F to come, as far as I know, they have never seen the light of day?

Variations of 1A, note how the upper one has had a better defined paint job than the lower one, these look - upon a quick glance - to have been airbrushed, but closer inspection reveals they have been done with sponge in the traditional way, Messerschmitt fuselage uppers - oh I remember it well, grey finger-nails for a week!...with a duck-egg blue undercoat...the fingers as well as the fuselage!!!

The bases are very smooth however, so there must be some sort of protective coating applied after painting, in a semi-silk finish. Given the number of vac-forms Atlantic indulged in, and given that the colours don't run into each other, i.e.; Were allowed to dry between stages, it's no wonder they went bust, their labor-costs must have been horrendous, even if they were paying peanuts to the poorer workers in the South.

One of the smaller play-sets from the 'modern' sets, there were umpteen of these in all sizes, I'm showing this one as it was meant to be cut into even smaller vac-formlettes! as can be seen in the arrowed flier. Note also how the vac-forms in the flier are a darn-sight better painted than the ones that left the factory...disappointment being another good reason for eventual bankruptcy!

V is for Vac-forms, Part 2 - Bellona Battlefields, Powerplay Battleground & Efka Battle-Ho-Rama

Bellona set on the left, this is one of the smaller sets from Micro Mould Plastics (Unifax group), and they have appeared in various header-cards over the years, all white, and green that I know of and were sold as Bellona, Mico Mold, and Almark, they also supplied some to Roco Minitanks. I've recently seen it said Bellona were 'Always in a dark brown colour', as will become apparent further down the post, they actually came in a wide verity of colours, from pure white and grey to dark olive covering most shades of sand and fawn on the way! I'm also pretty sure the upper cottage of the two was copied by Skytrex in 1:300 scale lead!

To the right a Battleground set, these were made in Stockport in the UK, by Power Play/Mainstream Products, but seem to have been mostly sold in the US, probably so's not to get into a major war with Bellona. Some sets are similar to Bellona, others however, are quite unique. There seem to have been at least 18 in the rage of which I now know of 13.

To the left are a couple of Battle-Ho-Rama's from Efka, which I am pretty sure is a Belgian company, Unlike Battleground, these are all straight copies on Bellona ideas, tweaked to be less than identical. On the right we see the Bellona 'Small Bridge' with the Efka copy - Campaign Bridge with 2 machine-gun posts - behind, their walls, tents and gun-positions are all equally similar, and the 'Albert Canal' base in the bigger bag is clearly aping Bellona's 'Canal Wharf' set.

Going back to the bridges, you can see two treatments, either cutting them out with the culvert filled and painting it a dark colour, which leaves a little strength in a flimsy moulding (bough-in in a mixed lot of tat), or as I began to do (20+ years ago!), base it and cut out the culvert arches ready to paint 'water', the base giving it a strength that will help it survive a hundred war-games.

Of the various vac-form companies, Bellona seem to have been the most prolific, both in number of sets (40 or more in the final list) and in production, model shops still had large quantities of these to shift in the late '90's. Top right shows a couple of roofed bunkers, quite a few of both Bellona's and Efka's pieces were of this 'constructional' type, they called for a steady hand with the knife/scissors!

Here we see more examples of mine and another's work's to strengthen/enhance them for war-gaming, A) shows the basing of the set to the left, with two different approaches to cutting it out, the other guy (far left) will get cracks forming inward from the acute angles he's cut at the back of the position, cutting straight, on the flat area of 'waste' sheet prevents that, basing gives stability. B) Filling the gaps in a tightly-trimmed piece and starting to landscape with door-mat beatings.

C) shows a plaster-cast I've taken from the shell-scrape to the right, you can make quite a few castings before the vac-form starts to suffer damage. D) Is two treatments of a shell scrape to show in the upper example; a 'usable' (by troops) 'shell-scrape', in the lower one; a mud-filled 'shell-hole'. Humm...not much difference between shell-hole and hell-hole, huh?

The wall's (top left); Showing the way I created the one in the middle, first I cut the ends off two short sections (I couldn't wait for Tangley or Concord Models to get the long lengths in!) and glued them together before highlighting the 'gaps' in the dry-stone with matt black (1), then painted the stones in one-at-a-time with different shades of grey, keeping the darker 'Atlantic Grey' as the predominant shade (2) and finally dry-brushed in pale gray before flocking the base with saw-dust 'scatter'. Twenty-plus years and I've got one length finished!! Ah...you either collect, or war-game, or model, if you try to do all three you're bound to fail at at-least two of them!

I've also shown made and unmade corner pieces, note there are at least four colours/shades of plastic here, if someone tells you otherwise, send them here!

Again Efka produced a very similar sheet (I recon - if treated the same as mine they'd be hard to tell apart), but with angled sections at about 50% and a strange corner piece that meant you couldn't produce a usable enclosure (or 'run') from even two sheets?

The Bellona tentage, I seem to have lost the pup-tents that came with this set, but they were a bit shite! I added flaps to the bell-tents (a common design dating from before the Crimean War until well after WWII, and taking in most of the main campaigns of the Colonial period and the ACW.

The other tent is a bit of a dead-loss, can't get it to look realistic enough for my taste and if I re-did it now, I'd replace my rather weird attempt at a rolled up door with something bunched in ties, from tissue-paper. Efka went with a slightly more plausible medieval looking thing, but binned the Bell-tents for two horrendous 'coconut-shies' and had a similar number of blobby Pup-tents.

V is for Vac-forms, Part 3 - Others/Unknowns

Here we have a few odds and sods; Top left is what I suspect is the insert for the box-packaging of a 1950's set of toy soldiers, or a wagon or such-like, being a sort of trench, open at both ends (07-03-2017 - it is - Cané of Italy trench, issued with 5/6 figures in a blister above it's own, on a backing card). Next to it - in black - is what I thought was an Amera moulding, being in a heavier gauge plastic than the older makes, however it's not on their website, so I guess it isn't, however it looks quite modern so someone will know, JNT? Far right is something I know I've got somewhere in the collection/archive, but just because it's supposed to be there doesn't mean I can find it! I think it's from the Esci board-game/play-sets of a few years ago but don't quote me.

Below left, could be from one of the earlier Esci Polystyrene play-set/kit compendiums of the 1970's but I favour it being a Power Play MPG 10 - Wrecked Vehicle. Easily identifiable are the broken bits of an Airfix 88mm Gun and Tractor, along with the Austin Ambulance and K6 fire-engine from the same manufacturer's RAF Emergency Set. You can see in the enlarged Photograph (click on it) that it's had to be reinforced with copious amounts of liquid glue - itself stiffened with sprue shavings, in order to fill the cracks of ages.

Finally a space-base, which I had hoped - when I saw it - was part of the base for my Marx Mystery Spaceship, however it doesn't seem to 'go', so I guess it's a more modern thing. Interestingly it has a hole in the middle for mounting some model or other, and has a wall hanger tucked underneath, so I'm sure a kit-guy will instantly recognize it, whether they choose to share the info with the rest of us remains to be seen (Oh yes!; I'm very cynical this week!).

Here we have the vac-formed mould for Linka walls and European style cobbled pavement, Linka being carried by Merit at one point, and - I believe - still going, now in the States and with a truncated range. They also used vac-forming for the Steeple mould and as part of the rather complicated Tower moulds.

Below to the left is a small piece taken from a larger base-plate, with a small cannon and a pile of cannon-balls, I know Bellona did a few historical pieces so it could be them, they did use this colour of plastic on at least one run, however it might be from a ship kit's base?

Finally - the tray from a Tesco packet of fish (a rather nice mackerel if I recall correctly!), sides cut away and you get a fine set of British pattern Dragons-teeth for an early war 'Sea-lion' scenario, there is a line of these type running straight through the middle of Guildford to this day!. This type of food packaging often has useful repeat pattern mouldings, or equally useful (larger) shapes (individual puddings) for war-games scenery, I've seen a fantastic Sci-Fi tower made - primarily - out of yogurt pots, a plastic wine glass and chocolate-moose bowls! Word of warning, these are often ABS, polypropylene or PE based plastics, so gluing is much easier with a hot-glue gun.

Guildford, Surrey, these are to be found behind the Travelers Lodge down at Ladymead, on the footpath to the River Wey. In the valley itself, where the main German Trust was expected, they follow the continental fashion of having shorter ones at the front (facing the East-coast as you look along the downs) so that any vehicle failing to see them all covered in brambles would ride-up them and get 'beached', while on this steep slope - unsuitable for vehicles, they are all of the same height, as they are to force infantry to weave their way through them under 'effective fire' from brick pill-boxes and entrenchments (now overgrown) set further back.

There are more remains of this line near the 'secret bunker' you can get guided tours round!..every English Heritage weekend! (or Guildford Arts Festival week? Either way - It's about now each year), beyond the London Road railway station, but on the other side of the road.

R is for Rare....or not! Imex and Accurate

One hears the refrain 'Really Rare' an awful lot within the collecting fraternity, mostly - it has to be said - from either dealers, or the inhabitants of the Internet 'Bubble'. There are - of course - some things which are genuinely rare, but most of the stuff we collect was produced in vast quantities to feed a global customer base, or justify the expense of the moulding tools.

Here are a couple of things which have worn the epithet 'Rare' in the last fifteen years, on the left a figure of Custer from Imex, on the right a dead (or very poorly!) Confederate soldier from Accurate.

The Imex figure being an addition to the Union (Federal) Cavalry sprue, for the Battle of the Little Big Horn play set, was simply a marketing gimmick to get people who had already bought the figure sets seperately to shell out for more of the same.

The Accurate figure was dropped from the mould and replaced by a figure standing with his arms out.

Of course Imex had permanently altered the mould (or forgot to change the insert back?) and started issuing Custer in the separate cavalry boxes of subsequent issues, so now the overly expensive play-set is shifted at cost-price at shows and swap-meets, by dealers happy to get rid of their back stock and the figure is no longer 'rare' at all. Worse; It's become a lottery which set/figure you get, Big Bad Custer, or a chap waving at his mother!!!

The Accurate figure on the other hand remains 'rare', but as a non-issued figure is only a curious part of the production process, and of limited interest/use. By which I mean, if you take it off the sprue and paint it up for inclusion in a war-game army, you are - of course - destroying an historical artifact, but leave it on the sprue, and it's just a dead lifeless thing, (twice dead in this case!). So; Rare figure or unusual artifact? Would you give the same significance to the floor sweepings of the production line or the sculptors studio chaff? No.

And if the new owners of the Accurate moulds were to find the insert? Mass production would probably follow.

U is for Universal Powermaster Corporation (UPC)

Strangely absent from recent printed works on the subject, these are not too rare, you just need to get to the shows and ferret about a bit!

The important one - from a Toy Soldier collectors point of view - is set 3022-29; 'Combat Group Soldiers', it is - like the rest of the range - a straight copy of the Roco Minitanks set 'U.S. Soldiers Combat Group'. The 29 being the US price in cents, a suffix shared by the whole range.

The box states "Litho in the U.S.A.", I suspect however that the contents came from Japan, where a dozen or so companies were producing this 1:87/1:100 stuff, most of it copied either from Roco or Roskopf.

Shots of the figures, with comparison close-ups of the Roco originals. Pantographing has reduced them from the already quite small Roco's to even smaller, however they still look OK and painted-up the size differential would be even less noticeable.

Study of the Roco sWS (schwerer Wehrmachtsschlepper), in front of the UPC copy, the copy is quite good size-wise having lost less than a millimeter, however it looses heavily on the detail, note the 'washed' effect on the bonnet (hood) side plate. Piracy extends to the small hole-filler used by Roco for the GS/Cargo variant, where it fills the mounting hole used to locate the hardware of the other versions, UPC copied them also!!

One fundamental fault I forgot to mention, they have managed to get the mounting slots on the running gear reversed from the Roco original, so the drive wheels are at the wrong end!

P is for Plunder, show plunder!

A month late but here is the first stage of the sorting of my plunder from the Plastic Warrior show in Richmond at the start of the month.

Left to right, back to front (vaguely!); Two nice European Cavalry, I think one French one Spanish? Street light from F.G. Taylor. A pile of civilian and farm figures and a pile of astronauts and Sci-Fi figures. All the Robin Hood/William Tell and medieval examples, a tractor from the Timee factory in Germany with a nice policeman by Solido behind, a pile of Napoleonics and two Hong Kong divers with the Blue Box fort in front. In the center an unusual African and various animals including a dinosaur! To the front the additions to my Bonux which I covered a week or so ago, two Merten 40mm, three - probably French - knights and tanks from Jimson (also now covered), Russia (flat) and an unknown (to me, not the Matchbox one, not the Budgie one?), British Die-cast.

Cowboys and Indians, a couple of carded items and the small scale mostly sorted already into 4x5 inch bags. Two really nice Coma figurines; Alpini in white and Bersaglieri in red, with a mint Rosenhain & Lipmann rail-car (horse and cattle wagon), to the front three French combat infantry, a few bits, a load of Timee (most Germany but some US production), two smaller piles of ACW and Ceremonials and a bag of unpainted Prieser ACW peeking from the right.
The size range of the non-small scale stuff, the Marx PVC circus performer (bottom right) is 40mm.

I also got a bag of Britains pirates on Timpo copy bases which I'm saving for a future post and a few other bits that went straight into their 'homes'.

L is for Little Ships and 'Lest We Forget'

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Ninevah and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Kipling

Your voice - use it

Life's too short to keep your mouth shut...

C is for Celluloid

I have some animals somewhere, and I've already published a cow ('Unknown Animals' post - I think), however these are the only celluloid soldiers I have in the collection, although there are other figures, they're for Christmas!

The three figures with an Airfix Japanese soldier for size comparison, the smaller two are about 45mm, the larger about 54mm. The guy on the left is - I suspect - meant to be a US Marine in 'Red Dress' uniform, but the colours have been reversed, the middle figure, looks Japanese due to the long puttees, yet I think he's meant to be part of the expeditionary force to the Philippines, the colours again being a little fanciful, but it may be that he's intended to depict General Aguinaldo, leader of the revolutionary forces who is depicted as being captured by the US forces in a red shirt, and subsequently forced by the Japanese to broadcast propaganda during the second world war? The Guardsman is obvious.

The bright colours as due in no small part to the semi-transparent paint/ink known as 'Spirit Paint' which used to give a metallic hue to the metal figures of Britains and Crescent et al. sold at the 'Penny Toy' end of the market between the wars, indeed it was used on tin penny-toys as well. Although these figures date from the American occupation period, so 'Dime-store' rather than 'Penny'!

Markings; all are marked Japan, with the guardsman having a large letter 'A'. Although the Marine has no logo, his rifle and arm-string are so similar to the third figure I would be surprised if they're not from the same stable, using a star logo on the questionable figure.

Construction is quite clear in these pictures, Vac-formed halves are glued together with arms connected by knotted strings running through the torso. More complicated designs (particularly dolls-house Dolls) have moving legs, or even jointed heads and waists.

I used to have 6 of the Severn Dwarfs in this material but I sold them in a daft moment a few years ago, happily they went to a good home with a lady in the States who had Snow White! they were even more simply painted with one colour of flat-matt splashed on one item of clothing per figure.

H is for Highland Reaver

A while since we had a 'lazy post', so here is one, from the archives of my mates collection...

Cherilea Highlanders of the (vaguely?) Jacobean period, can't remember if there should be 6 or 8 poses, but there are 6 here. They never really had an enemy, or counter force and were I think, meant to fight the medieval knights, however the garb is a bit anachronistic for that. But...they were 'toys', and as such are quite well proportioned (not always a factor with Cherilea), very colourful (especially when new) and dynamic.

News, views etc...Follower Links

I've finally managed to get my crossed Google/Blogger 'profiles' to behave, and have managed to follow all those I previously couldn't, particularly the Spanish blogs, which would not recognize me, and I'd try every month or so!

In a nutshell (if anyone else if having the same problem) when I clicked on 'follow this blog' it would take me off to Google rather than Blogger, and give me a blank face rather than my coat of arms, this was half down to my using the same eMail to sign-up to something, without even thinking about it ages ago and half down to the 6 months between computers, because it didn't happen on the old lap-top.

So today I fiddled around until I realized I had to let it sign me up with the wrong profile and then change it using the 'options' button under my Google profile on the other persons site, then choose 'have you an other existing web profile' button on the resulting pop-up. Then just clicked the Blogger button on a third pop-up and all was well. I say well...I've now had to change my Google Password to the same as my Blogger password, bringing the two profiles closer together...Doh! And I haven't checked if my Google pages are still turning Spanish? Which was another symptom of this 'progress' lead communications revolution.

And don't get me started on how Hotmail behaves under Firefox umptysomethingpointsix!! Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm suddenly following you after 2 years, that's why!

G is for Gyro-jet, by Elmont

Not much to say about this really, don't know anything about the company, thought I might have something in the library, I'm not going to spend a whole afternoon looking only to find something along the lines of "Elmont...British novelty toy manufacturer"! There was an Eldon working out of the States, making larger, better constructed toys and they made a fine Yacht with Cellulose acetate parts, but apart from a similar name, I suspect no link or connection whatsoever!

So enjoy the image, whack the nipple on the nose and the pilot ejects, dealing with the obvious obstacle of a canopy with his head. Something that happened only too commonly in Air Force and Naval aviation in the 50's and 60's, as my uncle Johnny and his squadron mates will attest, or at least those two who survived to retirement age might...