T is for Trojan, not so 'Tiny' Trojan's

I keep meaning to cover - in greater detail - the 'Tiny Trojans' I supplied to PSR a while ago, but with my camera out of sorts and Fuji pretending they can't find the Gardening blog to comment on the images I put there, along with internet access problems (meaning this is coming to you courtesy of West Berkshire Library Service!), when I was leant Giles' camera (thanks Giles!) the other day, I grabbed the first few things I could, to knock up a quick article or two, and as a result, you've got the 50mm Germans instead.

Quick shot of the poses. The grenade thrower has lost most of his black helmet paint, and might have been enhanced with a second red (but I think not; they are both Trojan colours), otherwise this lot is all from the same period/batch. Although sculpting is crude on these figures, they are very well animated; Standing firer leans-in nicely, the Panzerfaust guy was the best available for 40-odd years, having only really been beaten in recent times and their officer has a sense of urgency about him.

The guy running is my favorite, stick-grenades swinging wildly from his belt while he struggles to get a pistol out of its holster at the same time watching the ground in front of him so he doesn't trip-up!

"I vill get you Frenchie! I'll slot your swede, if you stop running away zo bloody fast"

The grenade thrower again, showing both some of the different paint finishes one is likely to encounter, and the size difference between two of the masters/moulds. This size variation is common with both Speedwell (covered elsewhere) and Trojan, and extends to their Japanese Infantry as well. I think this shows earliest on the left, latest on the right, but that's pure guesswork, based on the paintwork.

You can just see the guy on the left has the more orange scarlet colour, while the man in the middle has the darker shade, both of which appeared on the 4th throwing figure in the previous photograph.

More variations, although it's not too clear in the photograph; the tank-killer has an overall coat of greyish-brown which has mostly worn off, it's also unclear (due to his age/general grubbiness) whether this was a gloss coat, or a semi-transparent varnish/wash?

The brown belt-order of the running guy to the left is a more unusual colour, matt green or gloss black being the common applications. Finally a run was made in a very chalky darker grey plastic as show by the MG gunner - far right (Sieg Heil!...geddit? far right? Oh, never mind!), this tends - now - to be very brittle, and this guy is definitely on borrowed time!

The Japanese in a similar vein seem a lot harder to obtain, and I've only got three, in two poses, so it will be a year or few before they're covered here!

S is for Speedwell

Because the Trojan figures only fill half a box in the archive, they share space with the Speedwell Germans, these are called Afrika Korps in the catalogue and wider collecting world, but 'Field Grey' versions were made, although they remain uncommon, so I tend to just call them Germans! In common with the Trojan's, these are around 50mm.

All eight poses, one damaged, they always had silver helmets, but these might have been re-painted? The officer has a plug-in moving arm, and like the Lone*Star ships officer we saw back on Trafalgar day (spanking the surrender-monkeys!), this suffers from 'early-English chalky-plastic syndrome'; that it's usually been separated from it's owning shoulder! There is a thinner slim-calved version of this moulding, see the Plastic Warrior 'special' on Speedwell (ISBN: 1-900898-20-9) for a good image of him. Indeed, the aforemetioned publication is definite reading for any student of these figures.

Although sculpting on these is marginally better than the Trojan set, it must be said; the animation is pretty abysmal. The grenade thrower seems to be hurling a piece of 1940's fitness equipment, or a detachable whisk-head, while the machine gun has clearly been liberated from a fireworks-night 'Guy', having been made from three sticks and a gift-wrapping card tube! But they were ONLY toys! Not much else to note, the different treatment of the bases being the only obvious point and very much in-line with the evolution of Trojan painting.

Far right is the greenish 'Field Gray' version I mentioned above, a mate of mine has quite a few of these and the helmet camouflage is both standard and the same as the Speedwell copies of the Timpo GI's. To the left is the multi-coloured granule moulding that is so common in early plastic production, going right back to the very early days of Bakelite and Ivorene ashtrays and pen barrels! Unpainted examples in sand and multi-colour turn up with only slightly less frequency than painted, but the green/grey ones always seem to have at least the remnants of a paint-job.

Behind is one version of the stretcher team, taken from Timpo, via Kentoys and spread - with variations - throughout all these early British producers; Kentoys, Speedwell, Trojan, Una, VP and possibly/probably Benbros and Paramount. The reason I've included it here is that despite the British Guards Brigade/post-war Tommy Atkins' 'piss-pot', I suspect this is meant to accompany the desert version of these Germans. [No - it's the 14th Army stretcher team from Trojan!]

I also have the same multi-maker British-helmeted mortar No.2 in sand yellow plastic, yet I've never seen other 'Allied' figures in that colour. Also, the same mate has boxes of all these makes figures, with a similar dearth of sand-yellow, so the guess is; the sandy Stretcher and Mortar teams were included in one of the bigger German boxed sets by Speedwell to increase play value? Maybe one of the Coronet series in the above mentioned PW 'Special'.

Close-up to show the distinctive base on most (but not all) of these figures. Indeed in the lot that came-in in the Autumn, from which these are taken, were large numbers of the multi-coloured figures (badly painted in a black scheme, probably home-painted) with flat bases, which may well have been sold as Trojan or Kentoys, or included in boxed sets by either, or Una/VP?

Compost Heap Project

Behind the two rather ragged old bits of sheep or pig-pen in the upper shot is the compost heap from 2009/10 a few days before it was covered around the 1st of May last. The lower shot shows the basic tools and bits I used on this project, but first a bit of background...

When I first came to the Rectory, the compost - as used - was a half-rotted foot'n-a-half of mossy gunge with recognisable lumps of household kitchen waste in it. The part-timer and I would pull it apart, and spread it on the veg-patch and stand back; within days a green carpet of dormant seeds would spread over the composted areas and we'd have to get the hoes out!

This had been going on for years and annoying the gardeners for years, yet it still took me over a year to convince the boss to go over to a two year system, by which time I was producing about twice the volume of compost, a lot of 'good stuff' had been burnt-off in the past.

Obviously, with only two compost bays, doing year on year off, a third bay would be needed, and this is how I built it, and two proper leaf-moulders.

After I had cleared a patch big enough at one end of the old bays, cut a few branches and cleared a dead stump, it was time to double-up the old iron pen sides so that the broken bits would create a half-decent 'wall'. This was done with simple wiring together where there were two bits roughly opposite each other.

Once the bits were together, the three sides were wired at the corners to hold everything together and hold everything up! Big gaps were then filled with lose bars wired in across the holes.

Old chicken-wire was then draped over the fence panels, pulled tight and hooked over any sticky-out bits, it was then laced to the top and bottom run and down the corners, again everything being pulled tight as you go.

Anyone who decides to follow this (? mad arse!) will discover that the wire is a real pain to work with like this as it has a natural curve and won't go where you want it, so you keep having to pull it all out again, then it goes slack where you'd got it all taught, it drives you round the bend, and then - just when you think you're winning, you get a tight little kink in it and half-pull your fingers off, yanking against the whole structure!

The thinner wire was then used to stitch panels of old fertilizer sack together, and then pin them to the fence/bay walls. Simply poked through either side of a join (panels) or fence-bar (pinning) and given a few twists the other side. All twists are outside the structure with all sharp-ends tucked away round the corners or under the bars with a hammer. Note also the slight overlap of the 'skirt' with the ground surface. What you're trying to obtain is something that will be relatively air-tight, yet collect moisture when it rains, or snow melt.

Thanks to the Farmer at the end of Brightwalton village, who's name I - shamefully - don't know, but he had no problems when I popped in on a walk and asked if he had some sacks spare. He said yes, and pointed to a barn, when I entered the Stygian gloom I found a pile of sacks bigger than a sugar-beat clamp! Some of them still had the dregs of fertilizer in them and I wandered off up the road like an Asian stall-holder in downtown Kowloon with this precarious pile of bags on my head, grinning like a loon at passing dog-walkers while fertilizer trickled down the back of my T-shirt and filled my....

Last thing was to start it off with a bit of leaf mould, leaves are natural ground cover-uppers and the little red worms you need will come up through this quicker than a fresh heap of grass or a bucket of spud-peelings.

This was actually the second bay I'd made that winter/spring, the previous October I'd built the one nearest the camera in the lower shot. This was for leaves over the winter and when this shot was taken (mid April) it had been covered for about two months. The lowest bay (second from the view-point) was the one I inherited and having had two years covered now, is looking better than the one we emptied my first spring, but it's still not as good as the stuff in the one behind, which has only had a year, but has the first magic ingredient...Volume; the more you put on the pile, the more the weight will press the air out, the better the chemical brake-down, the more worms will come...

The second magic ingredient; when I lifted that old rush matting to look under it, back in the summer, there was another mat underneath of small red worms, like earthworms, but much redder, shorter and thinner, these are called Brambling worms I think? With most of my gardening books still in boxes and no Internet, I can't be sure, but there were millions of them and they made the stuff in the next photographs (below)

Since this photo was taken; the other gardener and I have found various excuses to remove all the wriggly-tin (thanks Granite-head!) from the roof, as another reason the old compost was such a mixed blessing was that it was always slowly drying out!

Bottom right shows the third bay built this way in the background, back in October just gone, it's near full and will soon be covered, but look what's come out of the year old one! Cuts like cake, but crumbles like the stuff people pay 3, 4, 6, 8 quid a bag for (top right), it's a bit frosty in the photo, taken yesterday, but as you can see from the bed, will be a real soil-conditioner, and help with weeding, as they have to come up through it which makes it easier to pull them from the looser top surface.

The level it's at where the cover is thrown back is roughly the level it suddenly dropped to between the previous photograph and about June. It just collapsed one day when no one was looking, and within days the rats chucking out scrapes of stuff which looked the same as it does now, so I recon if you get it right you can use this from mid-summer, less than 6 months from covering?

There is a bit of leafy stuff left on the very top, but I've just thrown that on the new one to 'kick-start' it. This will go on all the flower borders, the true compost - which is looking just as good in the two-year old one now - will be for the veg-patch, roses and soft fruit.

I is for It's an Illness!

Freedom - What is it good for?

Good luck to the peoples of North Africa and - one suspects; the wider Middle East*, but one wonders what they will be saying of their 'Democracy' in ten years?

I would suggest they go ask an ex-East German, someone from the former Yugoslavia, or maybe; someone from Georgia or the Ukraine or a citizen of the Caucasus...

Some pundits think this is a brilliant move; "Democratic governments don't wage war" one talking head said on the radio yesterday (Wednesday 2nd Feb). Well, let's suppose that in the next few years Egypt, Jordan and Syria (no chance there!) all adopt 'Western style' democratic principles and governance, then lets go forward - say - fifteen? years; 'The People', annoyed at the continued treatment of their brother Arabs, brother Muslims in the 'Palestinian Territories' by the occupying Israelis, demand that their - Democratic - governments 'Do something' and let's suppose that those governments get together and decide once-and-for-all, to deal with Israel militarily?

One; Bush and Blair prove Democratic governments DO wage war, and Two; If a coalition of democratic Arab states (probably with the backing of Russia and China) were to go to the UN and deliver the correct ultimatums prior to acting, America would not be in the position it has claimed as it's own in the past, of supporting the Israeli forces with loss-replacement aircraft and an air-lift of military vehicles and ammunition.

Israel would cease to exist, and probably Lebanon at the same time, with the South joining a greater Palestine and the North being 'protected' as a protectorate of Syria!

*PS. What the hell happened to the Near East? Did the 8th Army or Afrika Korps take it home with them? That's about the last time it got a mention!!

W is for Would you like a bigger bill with that Sir?

Here's a mystery (or three) that beautifully illustrate Democratic Governance to those seeking 'Freedom'.

At least ten years ago (the 3rd instance), and possibly as long ago as 15/20 years (the 1st instance); I watched on television three programs of the Panorama/Equinox/Horizon type, or of News-Night calibre, all of which dealt with upcoming/forthcoming 'in trials' dental treatments, each of which - it was claimed - was going to prove likely - by itself - to greatly reduce the frequency and/or cost of attending dental practitioners anywhere; democracy or North Korea!

In no particular order, as I can't now remember the order (the documentaries/news items were a long time ago) the procedures were;

1 - From Scandinavia; an acid-gel, placed in one of those mould-taking 'guards' or targeted at a specific cavity, which would over a few minutes or an hour or so (I can't remember the details) clean the decay back to white enamel, allowing for the filling to go into the existing cleaned hole, with no drilling at all.

It should be explained that each time your filling comes out, they re-drill to clean enamel, after about three fillings, over 30-odd years there is not enough tooth left for another filling if the third (or 1st/2nd if the cavity was large enough to begin with or after drilling) filling falls out. Allowing the Dentist to indulge in highly expensive and sometimes painful work such as pegs, veneers, root-canal work etc...

With the acid-gel system, a far greater number of fillings could go in, and the painlessness of the procedure would - over time - see people coming in earlier, with smaller cavities, or as soon as a filling worked-out and/or while the cavity was still quite clean?

2 - The second procedure was from one of the teaching hospitals in London, and involved using ultra-sound to do pretty-much the same job as the acid-gel, a targeted beam of ultrasound would clean the cavity without the need for expansionist drilling.

3 - The third line of research - which was going to trial as the program aired - was an inoculation against the bacteria that causes the plaque that leads to cavities, gingivitis, ulcers &etc. It was hoped this would lead to the end of a need for regular dental work in human beings in general. There only being a need for reconstructive post-trauma work (i.e. road accidents, trips), or childhood cosmetic work (i.e. overbites, cleft palates etc...)

Now...writing this at home without the Internet, it may be that there have been developments since I last looked, but when I looked (about a year ago) there was very little to be found. Wikipedia had a half-page note on the ultra-sound maybe? But on the web overall; there was nought.

Why have these world-changing procedures disappeared without trace? Vested interests; Dental lobbyists, Big-Pharma, Dental Instrument manufacturers etc...You name it!

Do not think that living in a democracy ensures the constant betterment of life, or the sure dropping of the cost of living. Reganomic-Thatcherite 'Free-market' capitalism means you get what they want you to get and nothing else.

And if they don't make money at it, they'll either charge us until they do (witness the Banks; they bankrupted Europe, gambling with American debt, and now we are paying. How does that work?), or; if they can't make money at it, not carry it to production at all.

If the customer was always right, every branch of every supermarket would carry a few boxes of Grapenuts, instead many just have another two meters of shelf-space devoted to own-brand Cornflakes...sorry 'Flaked Corn'!

If the 'Market' was free, we wouldn't have lost our Nations best Rail Service a week ago, because Virgin (MEGA-Multinational multi-billion group of companies) Rail, would not have had an anti-competitive clause in their 'competitive' tender contract!!!!!

Yossarian! Where are you? Milo Mindbender is running the 'Free' West.

Pruning a Wall-Climbing Rose

A couple of before and afters, I'm afraid the pictures are awful, but the CCD (or whatever it's called) on my camera is failing, however, if I put them up here I can email to ask Fuji what the hell's going on with my less than three-year-old pile of expensive scrap plastic? And before they answer they can come and look at this!

The ticking clock of my employment here is this rose which was my first job, the day after we moved-in and which we've just cut for the third time, the photograph really is bad, but you can see how bushy the rose gets by the end of the autumn. This was taken about three weeks ago?

This was taken on Friday (the camera actually TRIED this time!), a good 85% goes, you take out a couple of the old woody shoots at the base, follow them through to the ends, and once you've pulled it all back down through itself and the wiring you can see what you need to do to shape it.

This year we actually took a lot off, as there were several strong new shoots growing strait-up from the base in a close bunch which are now fanned-out in the center (about five of the nine you can see). It looks harsh but you know what they say..."Let your enemy prune your roses".

News, views etc...Airfix Blog has content!

I've finnaly loaded some posts on the Airfix Blog here;

Airfix Collecting

As my camera is definitely on the way out and real life might take me off-line for a while shortly, I thought I'd better get it started!

If anybody has an Airfix-heavy blog or website they'd like me to link to on that page let me know.

B is for Back-catalogue...Airfix again...Yawn!

It's been a while since I pushed some 'stuff' to the Airfix addicts, and while I was digging out the SPG photo's the other night, I put these to one side, they are meant to be going on the Airfix Blog, but if my Camera's on the way out, that'll be on the back burner for a while!

The Elephant again, born out of the Tiger program as an expedient way of dealing with a (surprisingly large) number of chassis for the runner-up in the procurement program. Here with the ready-made Tiger I's from Airfix (top left) and Atlantic. The green one is missing the exhaust covers, no real problem as the troops used to remove them (if a passing wall or tree didn't rip them off first!) but the drivers hatch is a pain!

The seven poses of SAS in 1:32 scale/54mm size, if you click on the image and then go to the other side of the room from the computer, you'll see what they would have looked like if they had ever been made in HO or OO guage! Clear? Seeempulles [funnymouthnoise]

S is for Self-propelled

It don't rain but it pours! My camera is playing up, I have to rewrite last nights post and suddenly there's a visitor spike of a hundred people an hour!! So a quick small-scale'ish article for the visitors from PSR using old archived photo's from a year or so ago...

The SPG at the back has been seen here before, the Jean-Hoefler 'dime-store' toy, this time pulling the other mounting for the gun moulding. The Airfix Ferdinand/Elephant is an oldie but a goodie! (and hopelessly overvalued on feeBay, they're not that rare, it's the box that's rare). While the little air-portable ASU-57 is a bit larger at around 1:48, a die-cast model from the former Soviet Union, where they were often made in the same factories that made the real one's in factory 'down-time'.

Far to the fictional side of the tracks are these three; The dark one is by/from a dozen names (Kilty's Bonnie-Bilt, Built-rite, Sears, Argo at Loser's, J.C. Penny etc...) and while originating in the US, seems to have been moulded over here at some point as part of a mould-share with someone. The pale one - again - has been seen here before, and as I explained at the time seems to be Tudor*Rose.

Both the above have a mechanism in them which enables the commander to pop-up and down like a demented road-runner while his barrel thrusts in-and-out like a demented....er...well, in and out anyway!

The metallic space-tank is from Dibro, who also seem to have produced a tin-plate toy tank under the 'Gibro' label, I don't know if they are separate companies or if they used the first letter as an in-house product code? I thought these came in metallic blue as well the other day, but it cleaned-up the same colour!

W is for Wüsolin...not Düsolin!

Badly needed help with this one and it was rapidly forthcoming after I published a fine post on Düsolin - that well known (once, now long forgotten;) manufacturer of floor-polish made from crushed beetle-juice and camel-dung!

In the last photograph it's so clearly a 'W' now, I don't know how I could have struggled with 'D' for two weeks, although in my defence I had tried Oüsolin and Wüsolin! Anyway thanks to the efforts of Paul from Paul's Bods (link to left) we now know it's Wüsolin and that they are apparently very rare, appearing quite infrequently on German eBay and were designed with the intention of enhancing the small range of 40mm composition figures issued by Lineol alongside the 70mm biggies.

This was given to me by Adrien (Mercator Trading) at Birmingham, and seems to be an unusual piece of Nazi memorabilia, if such a thing isn't an oxymoron...Nazi nightmarebelia?

This one is clearly [Ha Ha! the beauty of the edit feature!...read the comment section!] marked 'Wüsolin' (and the sharper-eyed among you will also have realized that my camera's CCD is failing, so we'll see what Fuji have to say for themselves), it could be named after the brand of what would have been - then - a 'new' plastic?

This [Still] needs input from German, Austrian or possibly (?) Swiss-German readers/followers, as apparently the firm is still in existence, indeed, they may be modern figures? But that doesn't really tie in with the asking-price of a couple of non-character figures on evilBay recently.

Questions then; Does anybody remember this or the other figures in the range? How big was the range? When did they florish? Has anyone got some in their collection or tucked-away at the back of the hall drawer, or in the attic/cellar/shed/garage?

Clearly depicting the single-gonad equipped, short-tempered, arm-wagging, foot-stomping, war-mongering, young-men in uniform loving, Parliament-burning, poor-footballing, crap painting, take-us-all-to-hell of many a rhyme or ditty...Herr. Adolf Hissler (as Nostradamus tells us he should have been called) is painted in the style of a composition figure, and has the rough texture of one too, so may BE composition? The paint is also slightly tacky/sticky, but I'm not going to start scraping/poking what might be a very rare figure?

More for British/Antipodean followers - It is interesting to note he seems to have ended-up with one of Baldric's theatrical 'licorice' mustaches? I guess Baldric left it in the dug-out the morning of the Big Push and the opposing unit's painter & decorator found it while measuring-up for new wallpaper, once General Melchet had moved his drinks cabinet 18 Inches back in the direction of Paris? BhaaH!

Joking aside (and I'm half-German, so it's not like when I have a go at the French!) it looks scarily like Hitler...and while the figurine may be composition...


...the glued-on base is clearly an early injection-moulded piece of plastic, and here you can see (through the rainbow tinted lines of a 60's TV, indicating the failure of expensive modern photographic technology) the machine-tool marks, as the recess in the mould was ground-out in a circular motion.

If the figure is plastic as well, that might explain the tackiness of the paint as industry had to relearn paint technology in order to deal with the new plastics as they came along. It's not the polystyrene of the WHW figures, but seems too 'good' to be a phenolic/cellulose-acetate from that time (mid-1930's to 1944'ish?), which one would expect to see warping/shrinking/cracking by now.
[the above was written when assuming an age they may not - now - have, so does not apply if they are modern'ish of course! And the two on eBay are much smoother looking, I'll try and get permission to use the image...]

Disclaimer; The subject matter and all images pertaining to it including the part-Svastica/Swastika symbol are presented here as a historical artifact/curiosity of possible importance or interest to the small community of Toy and Model Soldier Collectors and/or any Militaria bods who may find it, and in NO WAY represents my views, political affiliations or approach to fascism, and should not be taken as any attempt to glorify or form of glorification of; The events of the mid-20th Century, the National Socialist movement in Germany, The Holocaust and/or the Second World War.

Indeed, having mounted guard on Hess, I can tell you they were nasty pieces of work.

PS; I'll re-post these photographs at some point when I have a better camera, but a new camera is not on the horizon - budget-wise - for the foreseeable future.

Which I did nine years later - here!

L is for Lindberg - Little and Large...

A bit of a contrast with this one, from very small to very big and both kits from the same maker!

The Little; I've misplaced the tyres on this one and probably lost the windscreen! Approximately HO/1:87th scale American Roadster of some sort (I've put it away and I'm not digging it out again for a name, it's not a core area of my collection!) with an Airfix figure for size comparison.

It's the Mercedes SSK...87thscale.info/lindberg

The Large; George Kearton was exhibiting this at the Central Toy Soldier Show in Birmingham the other Sunday, and has now put it on evilBay here: Lindberg 1/16 scale American Civil War kit ,worth it's start price, in my opinion, I've seen it in lists occasionally but never 'in the flesh'. It's all there and purist collectors will only need a bit of oven cleaner on the horses and figures to return it to near-mint, I think it needs to be built!

George - having recently moved to the west country - is settling down to plan a update of his seminal 'Collectors Guide to Plastic Toy Soldiers 1947-1987', originally published by Ross Anderson. So watch this space for news of that.

P is for Prieser's Plastic People

We have the generosity of Gary Worsfold to thank for tonight's post, as it was his donation to the 'cause' that lead me to dig out the others and put this post together. Quite out-of-the-blue Gary emailed me with the offer of some figures, no strings, and when I explained that I'd had parcels from New Zealand go missing in the past and would he mind sending them 'signed-for' - for which I was happy to pay, he sent them anyway - at his expense, so Gary, thank you very much, I share them here with all passers-by...

These are some of the little jewels that arrived (I'm saving the 40mm for another day!), a set I've always coveted, and never had the chance to obtain, click on the image and they are quite superb, and this is a 'factory' paint finish mind.

The Landsknechts - those ravagers of Europe in the wars of the 16th Century - have been in the Preiser catalogue for a while now, but like all the more sought after or esoteric/non-model railway sets are hard to track down, so having them appear on a 737 Cargo from the other side of the world was a real treat.

These two are from the Limited-Edition range of full bands. The upper set is of marching Fire Brigade bandsmen, while the lower musicians are the Border Police (Bundesgrenzschutze) band, standing...wearing tank overalls/coveralls? Perhaps a German reader could tell if this was normal, or are they 'at practice'?

This is an occasional-issue range, and consists of selecting the correct number of instruments from the six-figure standard sets and - like the Landsknechts, giving them a superior paint finish. Designed for railway layouts and the Circus dioramas which are such a favorite feature of both German model railway collectors and American 'Railroaders'.

Large Swabische and Bavarian 'Ohm-Pah' bands have also had this treatment in different dress/paint schemes from the six-figure sets and a Bundeswehr band was made from the old US army band issued in the early days of Preiser.

The upper shot shows those US figures from the late 1960's/early 70's with Set 261 leading set 262 out of their little compartmentalized box, they were - I believe - based on the American Color-guards of the Cold War who usually had the chrome-plated helmets, although more commonly with the 'Green Army Uniform' rather than the khaki shown here. I think I may have already posted the Merten 40mm versions of these in posts passim.

They are probably marching out to deal with the public nudity nuisance below them! The Artists and Models set, this is one spruelet, or a third (?) of the whole set, coming either as three separate sets in the 'six-figure' boxes, or a whole sprue in some of the bulk, unpainted sets or - in this case - as supplied to Faller, for their Architect Designed Lake-side Chalet. In which case they were given the basic paint finish and the accessories remained unpainted.

Another sought-after range of figures are the American Civil War sets, and here we see the larger group sets on the left, Union and Confederate, with - to the right - a smaller set of Confederates marching in a 'six-figure' box and the equivalent box for three mounted Union (or Federal) cavalry. Again the attention to detail on these tiny figures is extraordinary and the flag-folding is exquisite.

Like the ACW, the Native American Indians are based of the old Elastolin/Hausser 70/40mm poses, and - like the Revell figures in the larger 1:72 - would have been produced with permission. Preiser ended up buying the rump of Elastolin and produce a fair bit in their main catalogue, pantographed up and down to various sizes, painted and in kit-form. I suspect the Mountie is an Elastolin pose as well.

So; there you have it, Toy Soldier Collecting at it's best, German made Figures of Native and Colonial Americans, Canadians, nude girls and the Holy Roman Empire, waffled about by a Brit with some sent from New Zealand, life is good!

Sets looked at above
Preiser
131 Indianer - Indians
250 Nordstatten-Infanterie I - Union Soldiers Marching
251 Südstaaten-Infanterie I - Confederate Soldiers Marching
252 Nordstatten-Infanterie II - Union Army Group
253 Südstaaten-Infanterie II - Confederate Army Group
254 Nordstatten-Cavalrie - Union Cavalry
260 Royal Canadian Mounted Police
261 US-Militärkapelle, marschierend - US Military Band, marching
262 US-Militärkapelle, marschierend - US Military Band, marching
00270 Musikkorps Budesgrenzschutz - State Border Police Corps of Music
00271 Feuerwehrkapelle im Marsch - Fire-Service Band on the march
Courtesy - Mr. Worsfold;
24600 Heralds and Knights on horseback
24601 Mercenaries
Faller
B-255 Artists Studio [Figures only]

L is for Little Fluffy Clouds

Taken a few weeks ago, this is a classic late summer, early autumn sky-scape which - sadly - the photograph fails to convey in the way I was viewing when I thought it was worth getting the camera out for!

News, views etc...Central Toy Soldier Show

Dave McKenna's 20th Central Toy & Model Soldier Show in Birmingham is more than on the horizon, it's less than a week away!

Usual mix of Metal and plastic, trade and private sellers, nice venue with cafe, and within 5 minutes walk of the city center. One of my favorite shows, and for plastics, one of the 'big three' with PW's Richmond and PB Toy's Herne.

Sunday 31st October 2010
The Clarendon Suite, 2 Stirling Road Edgbaston, (just off the Hagley Road)

Free Parking

For other details and late availability of tables (none left) contact; Mr McKenna on telephone number: 0121 628 1397

Email: patanddave76@yahoo.co.uk

I'll be in my increasingly holey 'Tuskers' T-shirt if you want to come over and have a chat, say Hi or winge about my approach to the military history of France!

Table prices were £30 ( but they're all booked), standing room only for traders and LOTS of bargains for buyers...so try and get up there!!

Entry Times;
Doors open 10.30 - 4pm

Prices;
£4 adults
£3 concessions (Children and OAP's)