Last year the Sweetpeas were a bit girly and pastel for my taste, but this year's batch have a bit of gravitas about them with dark reds, blood-scarlet and imperial purples, so - especially for Mimi - here they are, on a rather damp August afternoon.
Clearly I need a camera with a narrower focusing 'beam' and a faster shutter-speed! This is a Humming-bird Hawk Moth, going 99-to-the-dozen on our Lavender bushes, a rare visitor to these parts - I'm told, but the second year in the last three that it's put in an appearance, pity I couldn't get a better picture, but it would not stop!
Clearing the Wisteria from the front of the big house, and getting it back into shape the other day, went off for lunch and came back to find the hacked shrub had fallen away from the house revealing this rather sweet - if slightly violent - Gargoyle. Apparently in 'olden times' they kept down the mice with very small lions!!!
The first is presumably meant to be a Czechoslovakian-service Russian Mig fighter, but is managing to look more like a V1 on it's launch-skid! It is missing the top tail-plane, and from time to time I consider making a replacement, but feel one shouldn't bugger-about with what may be a rare thing! Any ideas? It's about 1:90, 100% wood with paint, the red disc on the tail-fin is on both sides, there's no markings underneath.
Bought by Mr. Opie in Islington in March 1967 for the then princely sum of 3 shillings and eleven-pence (no wonder my mother would never let me buy them!), a quite good 2nd generation copy of the Giant fort, with the 'mongol' tower tops and flags, and a set of Greco-roman warriors based on Britains and Marx originals.
A year later and Bristol is going all ceremonial, the price was the same (Ah! the days before the oil-crises!), but the card had been changed to a printed courtyard you could set the fort up on, nice added play value but who was going to be that careful removing the staples!
Close-ups of the figures, the ancients are not bad compared to Giant, but the detail isn't there and they are more glossy than the Giant Originals. For those trying to identify all the variations of these, this is the lot with a very small, neat 'HONG KONG' and the chariot mounting-hole blocked up.
Two sets were issued, the same six poses of generic post-Cold War US ground troops ('Grunts'), one set being painted in the green temperate combat fatigues of a USMC unit, the other; Army Infantry in desert combats.
Checkin' out the check-point (actually an Airfix Desert Outpost), a close up of the 6 figures going about their business, nice figures and still readily available being only a few years old, and from the time when Corgi was churning out stuff in a mad rush to one of it's periodic bankruptcies!!
I tend to look upon these as being, like the various Bluebird issues in the UK at around the same time, a nice idea, but - if not actually daft, certainly born in the wrong time. Issued in 1990, when the small scale (non-war-gaming white metal) market was pretty stagnant, Esci/A-Toys were phasing out and Revell had barely got started with a few down-scaled Hausser/Elastolin.
However, like Bluebird and Galoob further afield, there was this piecemeal, drip-drip attempt by the established toy guys to re-capture the electronic computer-game generation with Toy Soldiers and/or wrest people away from action figures and back to something more traditional.
This was Monogram's stab at the impossible task (not that impossible as within a few short years (1996 onwards) A Call to Arms, Accurate/Imex, HaT and the Eastern sculptors would create - very quickly - the renaissance we are in the midst of and still enjoying), being sets of 5-each, factory painted, die-cast zink-alloy (mazak) 'Pocket Force' figures from World War Two and the Vietnam Conflict.
Unusual, but then we are talking about the company that produced the 'Monogram Merite' 54mm lead figures - while ostensibly remaining a Plastic Kit manufacturer - in the late 1960's! No scale is given for these but they come in at 25mm exactly, plus depth of base.
There were two main product ranges, the figure sets themselves in a substantial styrene carry case with built-in magnifiers to see detail of the figures (well executed, but a flat and basic paint-job) and a thumbnail sketch 'Collectors Card' of the troops on the card reverse, which - I guess - you were meant to cut-out and place in the box, although this instruction wasn't given.
And then (Never start a paragraph with 'and' Swany used to say...sorry Mr. Swan!) they were issued with the fold-up rubber 'Battle Link' fire-zones! This was the probably true downfall of the range, mine is mint and I can't get it to fold-up or stay folded for five seconds; you're not going to buy a second example of an 'interactive' toy that refuses to interact!
So, with 8 sets of 5 figures and eight Battle Links there are only 40 figures or 16 mint items to locate, and these do turn up relatively inexpensively, quite often. Distributed by Revell Plastic GmbH in Europe, they were licenced from Dixon-Manning Ltd, the UK toy design firm started by ex-Marx/Aurora guys John Dixon and Peter Manning.
One slight mystery - around the mid-naughties (an awful expression but 'the twenty-hundreds' is a right-old mouthful!) there appeared a pre-production shot of a then forthcoming range of Corgi military sets with figures, and I'm sure they showed some of these guys - complete with the oxide-brown bases.
However; I now can't find the catalogue or flier I saw the original in, indeed it may have been something like an issue of Die-cast collector, however if it turns up I'll add it to this post. I definitely remember mentioning it to Paul Morehead during one of our chats, but I don't want to be a Barry Bullshiter, if it's some false memory, the Dixon-Manning link though, is a likely clue, they may have had a set lying around that could be used for pre-production press release photo-shoots, especially if they were involved in the birth of the new Corgi range. In the end Corgi issued new, vinyl sculpts titled; 'Tactical Strike'.
Pocket Force
8071 US 7th Marines Vietnam
8073 – Vietcong Guerillas
8075 – US “1st Infantry” WWII
8077 – German Infantry WWII
- US Special Forces Vietnam
- North Vietnamese
- US Paratroopers WWII
- German Paratroops WWII
Battle Links
1/8176 – Vietnam Firebase with US Marines
2 – Vietnam Jungle with Vietcong
3 – WWII Farm with German Infantry
4 – WWII Beachfront with US Infantry
5 – Vietnam River Bank with US Special Forces
6 – Vietnam Sniper Base with North Vietnam Regulars
7 – WWII Checkpoint with US Paratroopers
8 – WWII Eastern Stronghold with German Paratroopers
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?
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
