R is for Romans, Rospaks Romans

Continuing with the Rospaks coverage I started the other week, here is the rest of their production, they did advertise Persians being released in the last two trade Ad's but I don't think anyone has ever seen them! Nor did they ever star in the illustrated adverts. They also stated forthcoming Napoleonics, a catapult and a War Elephant...such plans, such plans...

The standard Legionary set for Imperial Rome, 9 each of two soldier poses and a three figure 'Command' group. You got 5 of the accessory sprues so lots of spare arms (in glue-able plastic!) and the odd spare shield. A Transfer sheet was - again - originally included, but later sold separately and flash was niggle-some with this issue.

Cleaned-up and equipped with right arms & shields, the advancing legionnaire is a reasonable figure. On the right the same figure is given a home-made shield from melted/squashed sprue and with a cavalry arm fitted makes another auxiliary skirmisher.

Set AR2 was born Roman Light Infantry and would go on to become AR2a - Auxiliary Javelin-men, and AR2b Western Auxiliary Archers. Left-hand of each row is the original, the rest have had a little work with spare arms and stretched sprue, there was so much potential in this, and I wish we could have, today, more hard plastic/styrene figures...that aren't 28/32mm!

The cavalry set, again the transfers would eventually get separated, but with 12 shields in two designs and 6 arms this was good value for the 99p being charged in 1982, although our friends across the water might have had more to say about $2.75 as - at the time - 99p equaled no more than 2 dollars?

The range was withdrawn about ten months after it's announcement, and nothing has been heard of it since, Plastic Warrior approached Heroics prior to my original article in 1 Inch Warrior, but elicited no reply and various myths abound, mostly around inter-industry rivalry, however they themselves stated it was for "Economic reasons" to 'Observation Post' in Military Modeling, and the splitting of packs, selling of transfers for an additional 35p and painting instructions for a further 5p would suggest they were still searching for a successful sales model?

This was - after all - the time when half the toy and modeling industries in the developed world were going to the wall, so it's no great mystery! I've added a complete product list below.

Rospaks Product Listing
25mm polystyrene war-games figures from the Heroics & Ross stable, sold in header-carded polybags. Range Lanched in November 1981, finished by October 1982.
Greeks
AG1 - Greek City Hoplites
AG2 - Greek Light Infantry [November 1981 to April 1982]
AG2a- Thracian Peltasts [from April 1982]
AG2b- Scythian Archers [from April 1982]
AG3 - Greek Cavalry
AG4 - Macedonian Pikemen/Phalangiter/Palangites
Romans
AR1 - Roman Legionaries
AR2 - Roman Light Infantry [from February to April 1982]
AR2a - Roman Auxiliary Javelinmen [from April 1982]
AR2b - Roman Western Auxiliary Archers [from April 1982]
AR3 - Roman Cavalry
Persians
AP1 - Persian Archers Kneeling Firing, (probably never issued)
AP2 - Persian Spearmen (Kardakes), (probably never issued)
Transfers
T1 - Greek City Hoplite Shield Designs
T2 - Roman Shield Designs
T3 - Macedonian Shield Designs
Painting Instructions
Sheet A - For packs AG1 - AG3
Sheet B - For packs AR1 - AR3
Announced - Never Issued
- Persian Cavalry
- Barbarians (Celts)
- Napoleonics
- Roman Catapult and Crew
- Greek Elephant

K is for Kommantoe! - Solpa Commandos

While the Cowboys and Indians turn-up quite a lot, along with the various larger scale sets putting in the occasional eBay appearance, most of the small scale Solpa sets are quite hard to locate, and I must start by thanking Thanassis for finding me these, he'd been looking for several years when this turned up, and though the box is quite worn. it's all there and in one piece.

First thing to note is that the artwork hints at all sorts of Hong Kong favourites being available, the Crescent/Blue Box WWI gun, the Nissen-huts and tents, Britains Palm trees, Marx barbed-wire etc...but not in this set, so they might be in other sets?

This is what was in the box, all standard HK fare, there was also the windscreen of a - missing? - Jeep. Not actually marked HK, but I'm pretty sure that's where it came from, the trucks have different wheels to the usual HK ones, but the remains of the mould numbers of the HK mouldings are under these so it looks like they were produced in HK for Solpa. Trucks are ex-Kleeware models while the boat seems to be a new design.

The figures, again we have a mix of the usual fare and some newies; top row are the old Britains Khaki infantry poses, bottom left sees two Airfix Germans while the other three are relatively new and dealt with below.

As before no hint at HK, but - with the exception of the last three, typical HK figures, and the plastic seems to be HK style. The black marker pen on the officers helmet (sorry, I cropped his hand off! Rough justice indeed as he was already missing the other one!) seems to be a factory thing, two out of four trucks, half the figures and the boat all have crude 'detail' added with the pens, an enemy force?

The three 'new' poses. The one on the left seemed familiar and I posed him with the hard plastic Hasegawa kit-figure, but think - upon reflection - that he is based on the similar radio-operator from the early Esci-Revell GI's kit. The middle figure is the old Crescent 8th army pose, much copied by HK, however he's been given a vague German helmet!

The last pose is the wackiest! He seems to be based on the Fujimi kit-figure from the Japanese Infantry set! An interesting set of non-HK, HK production, if you know what I mean, and size as you can see is about 24mm. Arlin Tawser points out that it's more like the Marx WWI German of similar pose, and he's right, the elbow is all wrong for the Fujimi figure (and the legs are too close together), next question; Did Fujimi copy Marx!!!

News, views etc...Absence

Sorry, been without Internet for a week or so, I've added pictures to the Rospaks and Res/Kinder articles below, and a new colour of diver to the LP (part 2) article and will be posting a few other choice things in the next few days.

Will also catch-up with eMails (Bill, Ken, Timmy...) this evening!

It's all getting a bit mad over at the HaT forum at the moment, August = Silly Season! I'd like to point out that I am NOT, nor do I know, nor am I connected in any way with Huw, huw, or Hew Williams, unless he is in his mid-40's and lives in Lower Chappel, in which case I might have played in the River with him once, but that was 40 Years ago!

Roses

My Mother's Roses giving a fine show this week.

R is for Rospak

I first covered these in Plastic Warrior's little brother; One Inch Warrior - Vol. 4, but Hew Williams of Mid Glamorgan (I don't know if he's really from Mid Glamorgan, but whenever Welshmen write into magazines and things that's where they inevitably come from - so it's a safe bet!) was asking after them on the HaT forum yesterday and I said I'd post a few here.

Two of the Greek sets bagged, there are two other sets - Cavalry and Macedonian Phalangites, set AG2 became AG2a & 2b with 20 of one pose instead of 10 each of both.

As well as splitting the peltasts/archers (and splitting one of the Roman sets into two) in later production the transfer sheets were dropped from inclusion in the bagged sets as well and sold separately.

I used to think that the transfers also came in blue, yellow and green, but I now susspect that's a false memory confusing Revo sheets with Rospaks.

My pitiful selection of Cavalry, I know what the head of the other rider looked like as some have been glued to this guy! And with both horse poses I have nothing to complain about!

Available between Dec.1981 and Oct.'82 they were a sort lived range, sculpted in a Metal figure style by the 1:300 war-games & micro-armour firm of Heroics and Ros. Given the move to war game sizes plastics in the last 12 years, it's a pity someone hasn't put the moulds back into production?

There you go Huw (this should really hurt Our Man Dark's head!!), enjoy!! I'll post the Romans in a day or two.

The head of the missing cavalry pose, which as you can see has been 'cut and pasted' on to the cavalryman I already have, so I don't know what his whole pose looks like! And I forgot to post the other foot poses in the Greek range so here they are, again I have no weapons for them so don't know if they were separate plastic mouldings like the Romans, or metal, or indeed if you were supposed to source them yourself like some HaT Greeks? I used the bloke on the right to hold horses! Listing imported from defunct A-Z, below.

Rospaks Product Listing
25mm polystyrene war-games figures from the Heroics & Ross stable, sold in header-carded polybags. Range Lanched in November 1981, finished by October 1982.
Greeks
AG1 - Greek City Hoplites
AG2 - Greek Light Infantry [November 1981 to April 1982]
AG2a- Thracian Peltasts [from April 1982]
AG2b- Scythian Archers [from April 1982]
AG3 - Greek Cavalry
AG4 - Macedonian Pikemen/Phalangiter/Palangites
Romans
AR1 - Roman Legionaries
AR2 - Roman Light Infantry [from February to April 1982]
AR2a - Roman Auxiliary Javelinmen [from April 1982]
AR2b - Roman Western Auxiliary Archers [from April 1982]
AR3 - Roman Cavalry
Persians
AP1 - Persian Archers Kneeling Firing, (probably never issued)
AP2 - Persian Spearmen (Kardakes), (probably never issued)
Transfers
T1 - Greek City Hoplite Shield Designs
T2 - Roman Shield Designs
T3 - Macedonian Shield Designs
Painting Instructions
Sheet A - For packs AG1 - AG3
Sheet B - For packs AR1 - AR3
Announced - Never Issued
- Persian Cavalry
- Barbarians (Celts)
- Napoleonics
- Roman Catapult and Crew
- Greek Elephant

F is for Follow-up

Well, after the Kinder post the other day, I had got to thinking I ought to have taken a comparison shot of Paul Revere and his alter-egos, when Scott Leach did a post over on his blog on the Marx AWI Colonial troops, which included the Paul Revere character figurine from the Johnny Tremain play-set. This was so close to the Kinder moulding I thought I'd better look up the Elastolin 'original', this post was the result! The obvious first conclusion was that they never made a figure similar to the Kinder figure, George Washington (7080, left) was the only seated figure in the AWI range, and seems to have been produced only in the 7cm/70mm range. The horse however IS based on an Elastolin sculpt, used by the Wild West range (itself a variation of an earlier horse used by the ancient and medieval ranges), here shown on the right with a cavalry trooper. I then discovered that I hadn't put the Culpitt's rider on the spare horse at all - he was too big, so I put a spare Airfix officer on it instead, they were in the 'waiting for a base' pile! Top, a 40mm Elastolin horse with the kinder version to the right. Below them the full Airfix figure on the left and the Culpitt's figure to the right, while below is the Marx Paul Revere courtesy of Scott. It would seem that the Kinder figure is in fact a combination of the two, He has the right (pointing to the rear) arm of the Marx figurine, but the left (holding reins) of the Airfix. He has the wide-collared 'cape' from Marx with the coat-tails halfway between Marx and Airfix. So in the end a quite unique figure, which ties in nicely with Airfix and other war-gaming figures of the type. A comparison shot between the Kinder and similar chasing Blue Box 30mm cowboy, similar in that it has a 'swoppet' style base and plug-in legs on the rider. The Blue Box model is based on a Britains 54mm Swoppet original. Many thanks to Scott for the use of the Photo, Scott's blog is here; Things you'll like, it's very good.

K is for Kinder

Following on from digging out some archive images for the boys at Moonbase Central reminded me that I have yet to cover Kinder figures in any depth. In order to redress the situation, here are some of the more sought after and/or common figures available over the years from Kinder/Ferrero.

Almost cirtainly from 1979 and in commemoration of the American Bicentennial celebration of internal terrorist insurgency (it's a joke!), this figure is one of, if not THE most desirable Kinder toy ever made.

Bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Blue Box Cowboys & Indians, and based on a 70mm figurine by Hausser/Elastolin but in 25mm, this is Paul Revere running-off to tell tales - Bloody Silversmiths!

Joking aside, I owe a major debt of gratitude to the German collector Andreas Dittmann for this figure, as he had had his eye on it for some time, when the dealer (who stalled next to Andreas and had been seeking quite a bit for it, for some time) let me have it for a few Euros. Although, when I realized the situation, I offered to let him have it, he not only very graciously insisted I keep it, but then sent me a spare horse a year or so later, which I currently have one of the Culpitt's copies of the Airfix AWI Grenadier officer sat upon.

Res Plastics (RP) supplied a lot of the figures Kinder included in their solidified Nuttela balls during the late 1970's and on through to the mid-80's, among which were these Superheros in two sizes, 54mm and 30mm, so far I've only tracked down Batman and Superman, but these sets usually contain at least 4 figures so who am I missing? I suspect Robin the Boy Wonder and Superwoman, or is it Supergirl? [The apparent moulding variation in the 30mm Bat...'men' is due to the angle of lean on the green one!]

My favorites, but suffering from a very real frangibility of the plastic from day one, the Arabs/Colonials are compatible with both the Airfix and Italeri figures and with a possible 9 different configurations of camel, can really enhance the low pose rate in both those sets. Two Arab poses, one with a FFL style kepi-blanc and the other with a solar topee/Pith helmet, these are non-combatant in execution. There is a 5th pose, an Arab with his arm up, I haven't tracked down yet.

The guy in the kepi has a swagger-stick or fly-swat, but sadly it's nearly always broken, these and the figures below are in some sort of dense plastic I tend to refer to as 'nylon' but it's probably some more modern polypropylene? Anyway - all the small sticky-out bits were subject to failure from the moment they left the factory door.

Occasionally the two 'European' poses in the above set came with a horse instead of a camel, again the horses come in two halves but this time four of each giving a possible 16 configurations.

Bottom; The far less common Wellingtonian era figures come on garish coloured mounts, and these have some subtle differences in moulding, compare the saddle and base of the mane on these two otherwise identical horses.

The other RP figures in this series of sets. The Romans and Musketeers seem to be far more common than the Wellingtonians, Knights and Barbarians, but all things come to those who wait, and in the meantime I have another million figures to find!

Most come in the metallic colours, with the Romans (I think I have 4 of 4) in various golden hues, the Musketeers (showing 4 of 5) having the addition of silver and gunmetal, while the Barbarians (1 of ? 3?) were in greys and the Wellingtonians (4 poses?) in bright primary colours, the Knights(1 of 5 figures) stuck to silver as far as I know.

A 'spruelette' I've been holding on to for years without knowing which figure/set it comes from!

R is for Recent Aquisitions

Various bits and pieces that have come into the collection in the last few months, other than all the loose stuff that is!

Three Imai caricatures based on Star Wars, or at least using the coat-tails of the Lucas cash cow to 'fly'! A robot 'walker' from Bandai, this is apparently 1:144, but as it's a lot bigger than the Takara 1:144 robots I covered back at the start of this blog, there's a lot of flexibility as to what scale it - or any large robot - actually is. With some being manned, and others autonomous, and with most either imaginary or based on TV cartoons on the other side of the world, you can make them any size you want. I'll probably make these up as they're all pretty modern.

Finally a nice early pattern StuG in resin and white metal from Alemany, not a bad kit but the tracks are quite poorly moulded, and as the cheapest item in the kit, could have been replaced at source.

Dkwookie on the HaT forum brought these to our attention the other week and I managed to pick some up that weekend, still available from 'The Works' discount book/craft shops here in the UK, at 1:90 they are passable for war-games in 15/20mm.

They also do three different M1 Abrams paint variants and some helicopters or aircraft.

The LCF train set came from Peter Evans, one of the founders of Plastic Warrior, who knows the eclectic, completest nature of my collecting well enough to buy a piece of Hong Kong tat - so bad it's good - whenever he sees it!! It also arrived a week before he said he'd send it, thanks Peter!

I've already put a battery in it and rolled it round the floor a few times. There are now 4 or 5 of these in the collection, mostly civilian (plus a Skooby-Doo tie-in), and another only adds to the whole! [That's two mentions for Skooby-Doo in two days?......spooky!]

The HK 'Cattle', copies of the Airfix farm were an eBay purchase a while ago, but as they were still sitting on the 'still to be sorted' table, I took them for the photo-shoot.

Finally, this came from Mercator Trading (link to right), I sometimes help out on his stall at shows, and had watched it not sell for a couple of outings, but people did keep looking at it, so in the end I coughed up and will cover it fully in a day or two. A whole box of Dregeno wooden tractors from the former East Germany...Bargain!

News, views etc...Links & Stuff

I had a bit of a session this afternoon, moving a few of the less 'toy soldiery' or more esoteric blog-links over to the Other Collectables blog, and adding a couple of new ones here, both on 1980's vinyl smallies. I've also put a nice mosaic of Schwimmwagen detail shots on the same blog, which may be of use to WWII modelers.

Sorry for the lack of posts this last couple of months, but real-world stuff is getting in the way of the internet bubble activities at the moment so just bare with me, likewise I tried to catch up with eMails and things today, but if I've forgotten you, drop me a new line!!

A is for Archiving

I thought it might be useful to look at how I organize my collection, and deal with the mass of information/data that a collection of this kind tends to generate if you approach it in the anal manner I do!

Taking the Darleks I got the other day as a prime, recent example, here is a quick guide to archiving a new arrival in the collection;

The loose set gets put in a click-shut bag 4x5 1/2 inches (none of that jumped-up French artilleryman's metric shite here!!) with an index card that has the maker, the set title and whether or not it's a complete set written-in.

Two sheets of A4 paper are also headed with the manufacturer and/or brand, one is given a plastic sleeve and the remains of the packaging, the other gets a thumbnail sketch of the company history, other sets, piracies...anything relevant - sculptors, contact details, box types, colour variations, dates, scale, material etc...etc...

The 'detail' sheet then goes into the A-Z 'Book Manuscript', this is for small scale figures only (15mm-45mm) and currently extends to two volumes with about 500 companies listed and appendixes. In this case the sheet slips between Preiser and Pressman.

Had the items encountered been a figure-less space ship or box of trees, tractors or terrapins, this sheet wouldn't be raised at all, but Darleks are figures and these were around 25/28mm in scale/size, so the sheet is added.

The sleeved ephemera gets slotted into the larger multi-volume files on all things military and civilian - toy & model - Metal, card and plastic. Lying in between Premier and Pressfix, this leaver arch file is one of two for the letter 'P', being Po-Q.

If the item of packaging or ephemera is by a larger/more common company like Hornby, Lego or Airfix it has it's own dedicated file, series of files or other storage box.


Finally the carded set goes in a larger box with other examples of boxed, bagged or carded 'minor makes' (which I haven't bothered to photograph) while the de-carded set goes in this box of loose minor makes, nestling between a bag of Politoys spare AFV crewmen and a loose complete set of Pressmen Scooby-Doo board-game figures/playing pieces.

Obviously, with the exception of Pressman, the adjoining makers are different in all three archives, so....I'm starting to create a forth digital archive, which entails something along the lines of the first sheet above as a Word Doc. which itself is then put in a file with all images, scans and stuff pertaining to that company. This is a slow business, but as I get on top of one - it will go on the A-Z Blog in simplified text format as a list of known figures/products.

At the moment this is not yet really working either as it resides between a different Premier and Primo! Also cross-reference files and separate lists of ships/vessels, food premiums, space ships etc, need to be brought together...when I'm a hundred-and-five it should all start to make perfect sense!

C is for Cabinet Of Curious Things 2

S is for Schwimmwagen

P is for Plastic Hooks

More than one of anything is the start of a collection, more than ten of anything and you have a collection!

B is for Belt Buckles

News, views etc...Plastic Warrior 138 (June 2010)

The new issue of PW is out, and OH BOY! What a treat...it's gone colour! And I mean colour, not a center-spread or something, but right the way through. Not that you needed colour to start subscribing, you've been subscribing all along huh?...Link to right! heh heh...

Anyway, to let you know what will drop through your door in the next day or two;

* Part 4 of Les Collier's Australian production.
* There's a report into the Timpo reunion party organized by Alfred Plath.
* Matt Thair continues his round-up of Cherilea with a first look at their astronauts.
* Two Britains related book reviews
* A history of Cane' of Italy by Giampiero Larizza.
* Coverage of new products from
- Weston Toy Company
- Armies in Plastic
- Paragon
- Replicants/Peter Cole
- Ivanhoe
- Barzo
* Plus all the usual news, letters and readers adds (which are FREE to subscribers remember!).