The Bears Say;

Happy Christmas to all visitors to the blog; eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow our civilization might collapse like a pack of damp, moth-eaten cards in a hurricane - who are we trying to fool...ourselves?!!!

B is for Boys Toys

This is in my mothers attic, I don't know or remember when it was given to us or how long it was in the games drawer, as both my brother and I were not 'football' kids. I have a vague memory of playing it once or twice but as to who gave it to us and when I haven't a clue...

...but if you were a Football Kid, this would be the best under the tree on Christmas morning, a big box printed in two colours with the magic word "soccer" writ-large!

From the late 1960's judgeing by the hybrid tin-plate/plastic construction, although I think it soldiered-on for most of the 1970's pretty much as an unchanged design, however, the box got more colourful with each generation.

Close-up of the players, the ball - if I remember correctly - was a Subbuteo-sized thing but of lesser quality in a browny-orange? Chad Valley was resurrected a few years ago by Woolworth's, I don't know what happened to the trademark after Woollies demise?

H is for Have a Happy Christmas

Everyone has a favourite tree decoration...

Mine are Pine Cones, old; to the left and glass - modern; bottom right and blow moulded polyethylene.

Painted cones would have been among the first true decorations, along with sweets, nuts & fruits and the odd small carved wooden trinket or straw dolls/craft pieces

Have a lovely Christmas and best wishes for a better year in 2012 whatever your 2011 has been like!

Happy Christmas

Self-explanatory if you happen to be a reader from Japan...

To everyone else; Happy Lucky Cat Christmas!

C is for Christmas Nostalgia

The other day over on the Moonbase Central blog, they showed an old chocolate-bar multi-pack of the type that were one of the seasonal treats at this time of year in days gone...I can't remember if this was from one of those gift boxes or a set of Christmas crackers, but as the one posted the other day had cut-out figures that caught my eye, it reminded me that this was still in the family games-drawer...

Cadbury's, Rountree Macintosh or Tom Smith? It has cut out counters and a spinner, which would both be things you'd find in budget crackers, and the graphics are so 'glam-rock' post-psychedelia but still trying to be hip-60's...with a set of pantone magic-markers!

Just as cheap crackers would be likely to have a small bag of tiddlywinks to use as counters and a plastic spinner to use instead of the card one, they might also have a mounted Cowboy or Indian to chase each other round the board! Or - if you were really lucky - Roman Gladiators, ex-Quaker Foods.

B is for British - British Made, British Infantry

I haven't included Lone*Star in this round-up of modern or modernish British Infantry as my sample, while being of a fair size is to say the least a real mess, with a lot of repaints from the big purchase of last autumn, or hardly any paint's from evilBay or charity shop/car-boot buys.

So these are the other British made figures of the 19500's and 1960's, half of which will be re-blogged over on the Airfix page when I get round to spending some time on that page!

Upper image shows the Taffy Toys (probably part of the Thomas/Poplar Plastics group) figures from the big play set we looked at some time ago, they are 65/70 mil, and about as big as they get in British plastics after the Marx 6" figures. As far as I know this is all the poses, but there may have been others in other sets, or even sold loose? The EM-2 is again in evidence; see my note in the Crescent post below this one.

Lower shot shows the Cherilea 60mm paratroops, not all eight poses, and in various styles, this set ran for a while and comes in various single and mottled plastic colours and with various paint treatments, this picture gives only a hint of what's out there to be collected in this set.

Airfix chucked out two modern sets toward or right at the end of their true reign. 7 poses per set the British infantry are the earlier of the two and are a nice set, I looked quite like these guys during my final training exercise at Depot Lichfield, but; firstly, I remember the Karl Gustave 84mm being larger (and heavier!) and we all used the rifle sling all the time, a serious omission. The only exception being in Northern Ireland where troops tied the butt-end of the sling round the wrist to prevent the loss of the weapon in a riot situation.

The SAS were only issued in the smaller 14 figure boxes right at the very end, and while all sorts of otherwise intelligent people will tell you all sorts of urban myths in their desperation to convince themselves they MIGHT have existed in the HO/OO range, for at least one day...there is no evidence to suggest they were anything more than a dream in the marketing departments eye, transferred to paper in one catalogue as the company missed its arrester-hook and disappeared headfirst over its own flight deck to reappear as a marketable trademark/brand for the half dozen or so companies since associated with the Airfix name!

H is for Half-moon!

Crescent to be precise, and as there is a detailed history of the company currently being serialised in Plastic Warrior magazine (you are subscribing...aren't you!) I won't touch on the company much here, except to say that unlike their rivals they never produced Germans, not even to fight their own 8th Army figures, whether this was because Arthur A. Schneider - one of the founders - was a refugee from Nazism or because the Luftwaffe bombed the toolroom is unknown? So we'll just look at the 4 figure sets in 'Modern' garb, that's 1950's/60's so; half a century ago 'modern'!

The beretted 1950's infantry in 60mm, I'm not sure if they actually produced them in SAS berets, of if the guy in pale green plastic with the Stirling SMG is a home paint, having handled many of these when I worked with a dealer, I don't remember seeing them with this colour beret, but then I didn't remember seeing them in that colour plastic either, so it may be a factory attempt to tie-in with the actions in Malaya or on the Indonesian border regions?

The two insets show both base types and both the smooth and the 'sand-blasted' sculpts. The finish that looks like sand-casting, is true for all poses and extends to the Guards, Cowboys and others from Crescent.

The 54mm helmeted troops, the blue ones are really unusual (even 'rare'; a word I try not to use about mass-produced plastics), being the closest they (Crescent) ever got to Germans, as they are 'enemy' from a game or boxed set (possibly an artillery set?).

The standing firing guy has the experimental bull-pup design known as the EM-2 which was trialed at Warminster by the Demonstration Battalion of what would become UKLF (in my time) alongside the FN Fal and Armalite AR-15 (later adopted as the M16), as a result there is a whole family of Toy Soldiers equipped with it, despite it's never being taken into service - ignoring what various combat-wombats have written on the wikipedia page devoted to it; I knew someone who worked with the troops at Warminster in the 50's, and well remember reading the Soldier Magazine article on the 'end game' and decision following the trials; which were won by the 7.62-chambered FN (licensed as the SLR) and got the story from the horses mouth as it were.

As toy soldiers go these are really quite common, so I apologise for the poor quality of my sample, but as you know I'm relatively new to collecting the larger scales and will 'upgrade' over time! Much copied in smaller scales by the industrious of Hong Kong, they will be covered here one day...promise!

60mm with helmets, the radio operator from this set has been pirated as often as the 54mm set (and the 8th Army) but the other five haven't been. Again the insets below show both base types, colour variations and the moulding variance of the kneeling firing figure, who appears to have an M1 carbine/Ruger Mini 14! The other two rifle-equipped troops have FN/SLR's while the 'Tommy-gunner' seems to have a grease-gun?

The 60mm range with beret could also come with a US style MI helmet, which looks OK on the flamethrower, but doesn't go very well with the '58 Pattern webbing of the other figures! The plug-in heads bring to mind a small range of similar figures from Cofalux, who could be Para's, FFL or regular infantry with a head swap, one wonders which set came first? I only have these three, I think there are 8 poses? One is on evilBay at the moment but it's not matched - colour-wise - head to body.

The Blue figures are meant to be RAF Regiment (who secure and guard airfields) and were going to be more prominent as the Hawker Harrier came into service...they could - of course - be used as enemy, and lose - badly...bloody 'Crab Air'; not real soldiers! Having worn this garb daily in the late 1980's I can assure you the kidney pouches of the kneeling guy are too far apart, but the webbing is otherwise very accurate, for 'skeleton order' - lacking all the extra pouches we tended to add, water bottles etc...

L is for Let's hear it for Lidl

Not quite as cool as jelly Daleks, but getting there, and they compensate by being tastier than any Dalek!! From the current Lidl's Advent calender, and to celebrate the news that Lidl and Aldi have moved ahead of M&S in food sales!

Santa Clause, Clown and Snowman, edible 'flats'...nuff said. More free advertising, I don't know whats wrong with me...must be something in the food!

News Views Etc...New book...sort of?

Well, you have two choices, and under capitalism 'choice is good' (like four legs, or is it two?), you can go to WHSmith and pay £19.99 or thereabouts - maybe you have a something% off voucher from you last visit, they seem to be giving them away like sweeties at a kids party, in fact they'll give you a voucher even if you only buy sweeties!

Or you can go to The Works and pay £6.99? As the previous title in this series of almost identical tomes was also remaindered to The Works, I held on and er...didn't go to 'Smiths' whom I'd happily see bankrupt tomorrow!

At seven smackeroonies it's worth it for the new photographs, there's not much else new in it! However also at The Works are some tins covered in Airfix and Hornby Logos, I think they contain cards or something, one had Spitfire artwork and the other the Evening Star (I think), some licensing thing that didn't grab me at all, but some Heller/Humbrol/Hornby addicts somewhere might want one of each for the downstairs loo.

What with clip-together puzzle tanks, lead figures and a constant stream of HK/China dinosaurs, construction workers, farm, zoo and emergency personnel The Works has had better pickings this year than either the pound shop or poundstreacher!!

I have not been paid for this blatant advert!!! And yes; I've photographed it on wet, gravelly, concrete, and no; I'd not be found using a similar 'studio' setting for the rest of my library!

Z is for Zang - Zang for Timpo

That's the last of the Lines/Triang/Minimodels and Household Cavalry for now, I actually found the Corgi-Mettoy box today pottering about in the storage unit, but Spot-On have their own box and it's buried somewhere, so Tommy-spot will have to wait - probably a year or two, in the meantime here are the Zang composition as promised the other day, and I'll start on large scale modern British troops in the next few days.

The Civilians - as far as I know I'm missing two; the third mechanic from the set that included the pair to the left in the photograph above and a Chauffeur, who can be seen on the Timpo solids site to which there is a link on the right of this page or go here for the pic; http://www.timpo-solids.com/solids4sammelgbiete.htm I had the chance of one of them years ago at one of the old PTS auctions, which I failed to bid-on (it went unsold!).

There is also a question mark over the New York cop, as he seems to be of a higher sculpting quality, although it's the same pumice mix, and Adrien over at Mercator Trading thinks there may have been an American police car in the old Timpo slush-cast car range, which is where these figures originate?

All 35/40mm to go with 1:43'ish cars, although the kneeling mechanic will be 8 foot tall if he stands up!

The military figures known to exist with the exception of...again the Timpo link above gives a helmeted version of the WWII Infantryman I have yet to locate. As with the civil figures these were all made by Zang for Timpo in the late 1940's/early 1950's - probably before they (Zang) were working with Britains. Makes you wonder what input Zang had to early Timpo polyethylene production...perhaps that whole family of Britains Household Cavalry and clones can be traced back to the Timpo hollow-cast with his orange jacket!?

The small pilot is 20mm and came with the lead Flying Fortress, the Highlander 35mm and suspected to be a whiskey mascot/givaway, while the rest are around 54mm. Thanks to Paul Morhead for the Highlander, John Begg for the grey (German?) pilot and Adrien Little for the other 54mm pilot.

G is for Gold; Spanish Gold!

I first came across these at a Plastic Warrior show in Richmond about 15 years ago, only three poses, but quite a bunch of them, with the base studs removed, and a quick factory paint job I imagine (with the benefit of hindsight) that they had been sourced from an outpainter or factory worker in the Portsmouth/Southhampton area and used as a war gaming unit.

The three to the left and the contents of the bag are that original find along with a few more that have turned up over the years. I have thinned the bag out with the odd swap from time to time.

Having found them and had the odd older collector say things like "I think they're from a game called Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe or something like that", I turned to Board Game Geek and searched endlessly for the game, trying (in no particular order), Treasure, Island, Robinson, Swiss Family, Pirates, Tall Ships, Sailing, Naval, Navy, Armada, Raleigh, Drake, Nelson, Trafalgar, Sea Battle, Buccaneer, Privateer, Caribbean, Smugglers, Conquistadors...and anything else I could think of! No luck, nada, ziltch, not a dickey-bird of a clue...tons of games though; umpteen versions of Buccaneer (which a lot of people thought aught to be it - it has no figures), all sorts of ship related stuff, more versions of Battleships by more companies than you can shake a big stick at, but no game with the pesky figures in it...

By this time I had obtained the various sample saved for posterity by Brian Knight and/or David Pomeroy, and this shot shows them laid out in no particular order,

The top two rows were one sample bag, with all poses in both colours, the next three rows were each a different sample, middle row have been reversed so that you can see the pin-release marks prominent on their backs (click next to the image to get it up in a separate page), these had been dealt with by the time the figures were issued with the game.

The next row had a pose missing and a duplicate, will never know the significance of that! A final all red sample rounds them off. Both the all red sets are two shades of red and they were obviously playing with what shade to use, they went with the lighter shade in the end.

The content of the bag from a game, also from Mr Pomeroy or Brian. A few years ago I carefully unbent the staples, photographed them with my old 35mm camera, and re-bagged them, the two images to the right are the result.

The game when I eventually found it was Spanish Gold by Triang! There should be some little ships and a dice cup as well, but they probably have their own place in the box.

With the heavy bases these go well with the Revell Conquistadors and not badly with the smaller Merten and Preiser HO Renaissance figures - if you sand the bases down. The two shipmates/men-at-arms (bare legs) also make bloody good Scots insurgents! They can also all be used in ECW war games.

S is for Star Buy

What with all the moving and legal crap, lying baronets and two-faced housekeepers this Autumn, I never managed to do a report on the Birmingham show, and while I have some shots they are on the PC which is very unplugged at the moment. However this chap got left on the side of something and ended up in the car touring the watering-holes with me so here he is...

These are not that popular with collectors, gangly, late production, garish colours, inaccurate historical detailing, blah, blah, blah...I - being typically difficult - have always liked them and even when I was collecting small-scale only, delighted in sorting my mates out for him. They are easy to find; Cherilea late version knights that is - this guy however had not been seen before by anyone I showed him to at the Birmingham show.

Or at least the dragon banner has not been seen before, the rest is quite common, and I can't check my back issues of Plastic Warrior to see if Matt Thier covered it in his Cherilea knights round-up. The shield is not as common as the geometric ones either, thinking about it?

The beauty is he was only a couple of quid or so and with me being a tight-arsed skinflint a bargain methinks? Now; if only I can find a shield with a dragon on it....

W is for Wasps Nest [Leather Jackets]

The most beautiful architecture, Rogers and Foster; eat your hearts out. Sadly, as soon as I'd taken this photograph I sprayed the whole nest with Foaming-wasp-nest-Armageddon in a can stuff...I'll report back when I have the balls to go back up there and see if any of them a still alive.

Cowardice in this instance being the better part of valour, as they had already survived a can or two of non-foaming-instant-waspicide in a can stuff...and several hard frosts!

H is for Havent

The Minimodels plant in Havent, near Portsmouth is responsible for lots of the figures that turn up in mixed lots of small scale and the hand of Stadden with his angular folds is everywhere in the sculpting. These are mostly more game playing pieces, but there is a Spot-On 'Tommy-spot' figure or two as well.

Some of these and some of the Wild West and - forthcoming - Spanish Gold figures were saved from the factory by either Brian Knight (artist on the Lettraset/Patterson Blick rub-down booklets) or David Pomeroy, all came into my possession before I met Brian, so I don't know who saved what, but thanks to both of them for having the foresight.

Triang's game Helmsman provides the little yacht with a plug-on base at the back, the divers are from the 'Underwater Battle from Thunderball' James Bond tie-in board game, with all air-tanks missing, the painted one is from an actual game, the other two are factory samples.

The 40mm Guardsman is from the Rolls Royce by Spot-On, one of six on the grey plinth-like bases the Tommy-spot figures had. The two cartoon characters obviously come from a board game aimed at younger players, I don't recognise the characters, not do I know from where in Lines/Mettoy/Corgi or Triang/Spot-on/Pedigreee empire the game will be found.

The other figure with the similar base I did find in a Corgi (or Spot-on?) catalogue and I had his name and everything, but it's lost in the depths of a shipping container!! Although he looks like a Diddy-man, he was in fact a mascot for whichever catalogue or product it was? His sloppy shoe-painting points to an outpainters guide/master rather than an issued piece [See comments for all three names].

The Sweeny was a popular TV series with a spin-off movie or two here in the UK, and these are from the Omnia game of the same name. Taken from the Tommy-spot range, but given sensible bases there are two each of the photographed figures in a full set.

Unpainted Subbuteo, possibly just undecorated samples, but might be from a board game, the player on a conventional base pointing to the latter, but there was a 'sub' warming up in one of the accessory sets I think?

It's almost certainly through Waddington's and their connection to Subbuteo and the factory at Tunbridge Wells that Stadden came to do all this sculpting for the Havent works. He was already known for his sports trophy figures as much as his military work.

Couple of scans of old film-camera shots I took years ago giving a different angle to the Triang/Almark figures I posted the other night.

Next I'll look at the Spaniards...

B is for Britains...and friends

Well, this is the rest of the contents of my less than comprehensive Household Cavalry box, and consists in the main of Britains and their clones, one of the downsides of being THE household name for toy soldiers was that everyone else wanted a piece of their pie, a situation not helped by Britains then moving their production to Hong Kong, a place where if you give a man a Lee Enfield at breakfast, he'll give you an identical working copy by teatime!

Britains Herald, Top shot, left to right; UK black-based x2 (made by Zang but marked Herald?); a green-based one from after Britians had bought-in Zang/Herald; six HK for Britains with earlier and later (deeper) bases, and two with integral bases which predate the six separate-based ones.

Below them are some of the mounted from the range, they are a mess and I don't know which figure belongs on which horse, whether the brown horse is correct, whether any of the saddles are matched-up with the right rider....all I can say is that the horse far left is a UK made piece with the Herald mark, the rest are 'HONG KONG FOR BRITAINS'

Top are the Eyes Right Household cavalry, again I don't know if the saddles are correctly matched. Third from the left is the band-master from the Lifeguards mounted band and slightly rarer as he only came in the larger boxed or trayed 'full band' sets. However Cavendish Miniatures had sell-through on the remaining stock of a lot of this stuff and may have had tons of bandmasters for all I know!...?

Below we go from the sublime to the ridiculous, an early Zang for Herald mounted Horseguard (incidentally my favorites over the Royals) with next to him two of the New Metal figures that were just coming into production when my brother and I were turning to other things, Camel, Guinness, and girls if I recall correctly - I don't know what the horse looks like but from the vicious arse-spike on the rider I'm guessing the horse was metal too?

The inset shows how the little plastic sword has blown away a scab of hip, on a figure getting so brittle I was afraid to photograph him at all! The horse is a two-part hollow moulding with glued on saddle, probably all made of cellulose acetate, but the lack of shrinkage suggests some form of early styrene polymer.

Near clones and true clones; Top left is the Timpo lifeguard from the touristy range of little boxed sets they did, his jacket is always a bit too orange in the scarlet. Next to him we have the common HK copies in blue and red, I've never seen the trumpeter in this range, but he may be out there. They also copied the Herald khaki infantryman standing at attention, and the old hollow cast RAF regiment/marching with rifle, along with all the highlanders.

The figure on the end - very play worn - is a bit of a mystery, he has some of the hallmarks of the Speedwell Japanese officer (which could make him Kentoys or Trojan...VP, Paramount or...) and I'm hoping some expert like the 65th follower of this blog might be able to help identify him! Thanks for 'following' Brian - any ideas?

The bottom row are equally lost on me although I feel I should know, they aren't Gem, I have them somewhere else, likewise they're not Charbens or Cavendish for the same reason. They seem to be early British although very shiny-glossy, and have no HK marks, yet the obvious missing make (Hilco) usually mark at least some of a sample? Again any of the five in the previous paragraph could be in the frame.