S is for Southwood

All my life I've been surrounded by the military, I was an Admiral's Grandson, Soldier's 'brat' and would have been the nephew of a Navy Flier if he hadn't died, stuck to the giant-firework that is a hooked-up missile on the ranges off Lossimouth. And for some reason I then joined-up myself...must've been mad...oh! I am.

My brother and I lived on ranges, roamed training areas and were surrounded by soldiers - toy and real, we collected empty cases (sometimes not so empty!) and had Schermuly flares on Bonfire night so that we could range the heath the next morning looking for the parachutes which Action-Man then made good use of out of the bedroom window!

When our parents split-up (very fashionable at the end of the 1970's!) we left our heath and moved to the teeming metropolis [sic] of Fleet in Hampshire, were I - as one of Mrs (she's no Lady) Thatcher's long-haired victims of Tory cuts (plue les change...plus les change!) - would get out of the house for hours by taking the dog (Finn; he was a red setter - if you know your Irish tales) for long walks round Fleet Pond and the areas surrounding it. One area that bordered the pond was the woodland at Southwood, where the engineers had been based for years before the whole thing became a retail/commercial park.

One piece hadn't been developed and is still being used today, behind/to the south of what was NGTE and is now Qinetiq. There was in the woods what looked like the remains of a WWII barracks/training area, although it was probably used after the war, but it was derelict by 1980. Usual collapsed shacks in the undergrowth, concrete paths running between the floors of long gone Nissan (Quonset) huts, even a couple of Nissan huts still in situ, no doors or windows but dry enough for a surreptitious teenage cigarette out of the drizzle! However there was also a structure which fascinated me as I had a fleet of Airfix Matador artillery tractors...

...so the other day I went back (nearly 30 years later!) to see if it was still there. Vandals have sadly destroyed it since I used to scrummage about on it, but the remains are still discernible. Basically - what it was in former days was the back-end (troop compartment) of a Matador or similar 8 or 10-ton rated lorry, mounted on concrete posts, presumably as some sort of convoy air-attack/ambush drill practiser?

You can still see the concrete posts, but what remains of the rusty frame (it was still upholstered in wood when me and Finn studied it) has been taken off and dumped against an old ammo/rubbish-bin bunker.

This structure remains in a much better state of repair and the feeling is it was part of some bridging/obstacle exercise, or even for teaching the placing of demolition charges? The reinforcing-rods suggest it was never completed, perhaps due to the wars end? Someone has had a go at the main pillars though.

These structures also hang about rather forlornly, no clue as to why man once had a desperate need to clear woodland and force his signature upon the landscape in quite such a brutalist style.

The small angle-iron barricade is interesting as compared to both modern barbed-wire pickets and the old WWII German ones all over the Channel Islands (we once collected enough still-good German pickets to pen a sheep-field!), this is a very flimsy thing of thin-gauge steel, more of a temporary road-traffic/checkpoint measure than a serious attempt to prevent enemy insertion!

B is for Bow't...lill'wouldn'bow't

Looking at the Giant foot Cowboys & Indians the other day (Figures) I mentioned the fact that as uncut strips of six figures these came with a canoe, and that I'd dig them out and photograph them, this I have done...

I'd forgotten that there were three receiving spigots, not two as I stated the other day, this is quite a big canoe, at least twice the length of the Thomas/Poplar/Tudor*Rose/Manuba ones, and from the packaging - clearly not Giant production. These figures in fact being non-giant as often as they were!

500th Post - not!

This would have been my 500th post, however I still have three posts in 'Edit' from ages ago (which will probably never see the light of day) that aren't included in the total, and I've deleated a few over the years so it was closer to 510 anyway. As I seem to have successfully imported the 40 posts from the 'Other Collectables' blog a few minutes ago it's now around 539 which is not a celebratory figure at all, just a boring number between five and six-hundred!

However, my hits total adjusted to take account of the 2008/9 period before 'Stats' were introduced is around 165,000, which is 40-odd thousand more than it was when I had all the trouble with the counter back in Oct/Nov. This is on target to be the second month of 10,000+ hits, and I can only thank all those who have contributed, seriously - anyone can blurb away on the internet, but when people want to come back again and again it's very gratifying and gives one the impetus to carry-on.

That I've reached such a total with only 72 followers seems to be down to the fact that a lot of people in the specific area of plastic figure collecting I aim at, aren't on Blogger or even that active on the internet, so they use whatever 'bookmarked' Google search they originally found the blog from, as a result I have to thank whoever has hit me 53 times with the search-term "mighty max" or the chap who has come back 26 times using "avion playmobile de la page 37 du catalogue"! How that search term originally brought you here is beyond comprehension but thanks for coming back so often.


The upload of the posts from 'Other Collectables' and the Blogger tag-limit means I really have to spend a few days sorting the tags out, for the time being; NTS in the label list means Non-Toy-Soldier and pertains to stuff that has no relevance to toys, modelling or military history. Eventually I will have to abreivaite all sorts of serch terms and will put a key-panel above the Index.

So - heading for 600 posts and 200,000 hits (I'll re-try the prize thing when we get there!), coming soon; More Asian elephants from very old books (1906 I think, the next one), show report on Sandown, Elastolin marching 60mils, more hollow-horsed Hong Kong Cowboys & Indians (and 'Romans'), some more new production and some ruined military installations.

You keep reading - I'll keep blurbing verbiage!

W is for more Wellingtonians

I knew I'd seen some pink ones! I had them in one of the other boxes all the time...

These are again; non-Giant nappies, in yellow, red and pink. The horse they came with is the one I call 'Remould' but better than the ones we looked at a few weeks ago, so I guess earlier production by the same people, but the limbers are the poor one, so when I sort them all out I suspect we'll find they come somewhere between the two sets looked at the other day.

The base is clearly blank, the limber lacks the Giant moniker and I've shown the damage to the face of the box, it looks like it might have been another 'MADE IN HONG KONG' or an attempt at it as I've never seen them with that there, only the mould damage.

A is for Armoured Corps

Finishing-up the Timpo WWII for the moment (I can't find the German box!) here are a couple more collages of the British troops, same poses and weapons as before, but different head-dress.

I don't know if they ever issued the 2nd type with black berets [except in the bren-carrier]. but they fit! The guy running with an ammo-box is not a standard pose, but the beauty of Timpo was/is that you can switch stuff around to make new assemblies. I suspect the beret was meant to be an infantry one, but getting that dark blue right obviously would have been difficult so they ended-up giving us well-armed, dismounted 'Tankers'!

The bog-standard infantry helmet, the older types had a darker helmet and I think a couple of my new ones have the wrong helmets on...again I added the Indian head to the 'brown-gloves man'.

The officer body has the tell-tale signs of going/being brittle, the washed look of the green is a classic sign that these late production figures are giving up the ghost. The base of the kneeling guy isn't looking too hot either!

Those of you who collect Timpo will know how much some of the colour variations fetch at auction, but the thing with Timpo is that they produced literally millions of figures for years and started experimenting with over-moulding quite early with the knights chest emblems, cavalry braces and - earliest of all - the horses bridle. Vast quantities were shipped to Germany where there is a bigger collecting fraternity than here, but they also shipped them all over the world and were bound to produce variations from time to time.

Case in point is the torso in the lower images which seems to have been the product of a mould-purge after trying a darker green in the webbing mould. I've only been collection these for a couple of years and with the SAS (?) berets I blogged the other day and this I'm already acquiring variants, because they aren't that rare and are probably over-valued...a knight went for £500+ the other day! Not an 1890's Britains hollow-cast, not a pre-war Elastolin Nazi with porcelain head...it was a 1970's Timpo plastic knight...

G is for Gomarsa

Not much to be said about these, they are Spanish and are quite common. I like them as they are all marching poses and will make nice displays. Originally made in polyethylene by Reamsa they would go on to be sold under the Soldis (soldier) label by Gomarsa in a PVC type compound, which could be a vulcanised rubber like the Texido figure Brian identified the other day.

[Major re-write after comments, some of the less well painted ones may be Reamsa]

These are all presumably Naval figures and are the later Soldis mouldings in the rubber-like material, nearly all the figures march-off on the right-foot so can follow each other across the mantle-piece in step with each other!

Naval figures in Summer uniforms to the right and a couple of Air Force (?) figures to the left. These all seem to be late ones.

My favourites, the Spanish Legion and a lone Frenchman, they all seem to have a Spanish CETME assault rifle, which is a tad anachronistic for a Foreign Legionnaire!

Two military types and two of the Spanish Gendarme (Reamsa originals?) with their distinctive hats. The policemen are - needless to say - marching-off on the other foot...something that anyone who's ever done a large parade involving police units will know is par for the course!

B is for Barrow

The South-west and Central England is covered in these, but they are to be found elsewhere as well, I won't write much about them as A) It would be silly to pretend I am some sort of expert on the subject when I'm not!...and B) If you click on them the original cards should be readable enough.

These were photographed through the windows of the currently closed Newbury Museum and I don't know the name/s of the modeller or the author of the information cards, if someone does; let me know and they can be credited here.

What I loved about them was the 'old-school' feel of the dioramas and the fact that I could see in my minds-eye - lots of unpainted Airfix Ancient Britons having a scrap over ownership of the barrows or the land they stand on!

They seem to be made of plaster and painted with matt emulsions, and are arranged as three tiles to fit together in the chronological order of the development of barrow construction/architecture.

Wayland's Smithy - which is mentioned in the card text - is one Mim and I walked too one day, it's also not far from an Ancient Hill Fort and the Uffington White Horse, so all three can be done in a few hours, well worth the effort.

The other thing that caught my eye when passing was that the landscaping has been enhanced with two mint Britains shrubs (albeit with some green emulsion spattered on their lower reaches!), along with two similar Britains trees (Scots Pine, Larch or Birch?) and a full set of Merit Fir Trees, nicely dating these models to the mid-1960's at the latest - if that was all the modeller could find in his local hobby store?!

RP is for Régiment Parachutiste

A few more swoppet types and some foreign paratroops left over from the posts the other day, I don't know if the Argentine company of Tenco did paratroops, I have their British Infantry (copies of Herald with Timpo like bases), but if they did they'd probably look a bit like these...

...who are clearly copies of the Timpo para heads on US/German first type bodies, with a few changes, somehow these manage to look more French than anything else (or is it just me?!) so I think of them up-for a scrap in Dien Bien Phu! It's the sub-machine guns which looks a bit like the Mat-49 and the rifles which look like the M1 carbine...I think? And the lack of webbing which is usually found weighing-down British or American paras in photographs!

Above; A few Atlantic Parachutists, I've never been terribly enamoured of these 'modern' figures by Atlantic in either scale, sculpted by the same guy who worked with Co-Ma, they are a bit crude and almost 'over-done', but actually look a bit better in this scale than the HO range.

Below; Airfix 1st and 2nd types with a Polish copy to the right, these are covered elsewhere [Airfix Paratroops] and are just shown here to fill the post!

G is for God Save The Queen

For a number of reasons the three articles I lined-up for Friday still haven't been uploaded, but I aught to put something out so here's a tenuous link to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations which have just begun - a classic piece from the Silver Jubilee which I remember well, indeed I still have the mug that every school-age child in Hampshire was given by the county council...thanks tax paying-age people of 1977-land!

Made by Crescent, it was probably the last new moulding they produced!! A vast improvement on the old lead/white metal ones that had accompanied all the other jubilees and coronations from the 1880's - some of which were dragged out again in '77 if memory serves!

Of real interest to me are the little Beefeaters, who have a large spigot on the underside of the base which requires removal before they can be used as stand-alone figures, luckily I have a few lose ones somewhere so these can remain inviolate!

The whole assembly; strangely there were no figures for Her Majesty The Queen or her Consort - The Duke of Edinburgh? Originaly it came in a slip-over cardboard tube, without it, you can still pass it off as a 'mint' set by Cavendish, who obtained the remaining stock for their gift shop in Windsor or wholesale operation.

We are incredibly lucky to have a pretty powerless but never-the-less 'constitutional' monarch, no rampant Berlusconi's, short arse's with a complex, Victoria-cross self-awarding Amin's or divisive Bush's for us, no autocratic Amirs, no Juntas, Generals, or dictators, no Corporal this or Captain that, no year zero, five year plan or great leap forward, no little red, black, green or blue 'Book' - thank you very much, just a link with 2000 years of continuous history who does little of controversy and a lot of good for our standing and prestige on the world stage...

...after all if she went; what would all those fat, khaki-shorts wearing, tea-party yanks wandering around London do in the August break? Where would the coachloads of chattering Japanese tourists go? They bring hundreds of millions to our shores and inject them into our economy because we have red-coated Guards, gold Coaches and a Monarch!

Gawd'bless'yer Marm and may you rule for many years yet.

P is for Protest

..."Now it turns out the authorities are demanding the participation of people in the rally,"

Read more; Moscow Times

Absolute Classic!! Power to the [little] People!

O is for Over-sexed, Over-paid and Over Here!

A common wartime refrain in 'Blighty'! Referring to our erstwhile allies and their apparent lack of want for anything, pouring into a country three years into 'Total War' and the associated deprivations.

For some reason forgotten to me now, the American swoppets aren't in with the GI's but are in the everybody else (except the Germans) box? So here they are...including some of the better Hong Kong copies - and I use the word 'better' in its loosest form!

The first version Timpo figures, I don't remember an eighth pose but suspect there aught to be one? These are the ones I mentioned the other night with the moulded on weapons, the German infantry were the same but in grey plastic and with darker helmets.

Second version, again without my check-lists I can't off-hand remember what's what, but the two on the right-hand ends of the row are taken from the AT vignette while - I suspect - the chap top left is from the assault-boat, along with two firers; that seems to leave one missing pose?

In the case of the Americans, Timpo themselves used the American Indian head with the brown-handed figures, but not always, it seems. Note also how the AT/Bazooka No.2 is a variant of the waving guy bottom left but with the ring in the other hand.

The bazooka vignette from above with the US version of the parachutist we looked at the other night, the three little figures above are the Speedwell copies/attempts and seem to draw on both the Timpo figures (above the waist) and the legs of the 54mm Cherilea swoppets...a bit!

Various Hong Kong versions; some are straight 'lifts' others have gone with a bit of variety, such as the squatting figure in the bottom row, or the top-right figure who seems to be more based on the Britains Swoppet British Infantry. The top row are from three different sources, the bottom row are all from the same source.

By comparing the bases with the ACW ones we looked at here 'G est pour la Guerre Civile' you are able to start putting makers together, but you need the boxed or carded examples to do the job properly and I don't collect packaging for the large scales!

27th March 201- The pale green officer (top middle) is known to be M-Toy (May Moon, Maysun - possibly Marty Toy) and most of the bottom row are probably theirs as well. 

Dec. 28th 2023 - While the guy with the twin-ring base (far-right, top and bottom)is now known to be produced by Merehall who use an MH mark on their packaging.

T is for Toy Soldiers

Some more bits on Toy Soldiers in art and design;

Unicef - Turn Toy Soldiers back into children Poignant and thought provoking.

Toy Soldier alphabet Brilliant, but could have been executed to read more easily? (Oliver Mundy)

Amnesty International - CGI Bit raw? That's war.

Gold! Jewellery

Second-life More CGI

Gone to graveyards everyone? Common photograph, but with nice poem.

Saving Ryan's Privates - Ryan McGuinness Different...

Ghostprint Gallery - Francisco Amaya 'Made in China'!

What war does when the WASPS stop waving the flags UK-based Dorothy Collective - Makes you think...no bad thing.

It's amusing in an ironic fashion what minority hobbies we are collectively, yet our figures seem to permeate through society at many levels?

B is for Big Ears

This is quite an easy - non-Giant - one to identify, although as you can tell from the lack of a figure and the torn hand-rails it's the only one in this 'odd' box, I think I've got 4 more somewhere with the correct riders, so will blog this again when they turn-up.

The main identifier is the lack of stars or other decoration on the three discs of the decorative over-lay, this is unusual, with the other five or six types I've so far discovered having 4, 5 or 6 pointed stars or other design in relief on those discs. It's also lacking the little bite in the front of the chariot where a locating stud on the decorative element usually sits. The fact that the decoration is in the same colour as the chariot body is a third identifier as they are normally different colours.

The other 'teller' is the horse, which has pronounced ears cut into the mould, well back on the skull, hence my christening this one 'Big-Ears'. There are also differences in the front piece of 'rococo' trace-work between the horses pointing forwards, but I'll have to look at all the chariots together one day to get those differences properly documented. The chariot is marked 'MADE IN HONG KONG' on the underside but in larger letters than Giant originals.

P is for Pachyderm

It is one of my great bugbears that white-metal manufacturers - from the Hollow-casters of the last century, through to the current solid 'New Metal' guys and taking in all the war-game suppliers who've had a go - continue to provide beasts that are too small for Indian elephants or too 'African' looking or that carry the most ridiculous loads vis-a-vis howdahs...or more commonly; large turrets made of roof-timbers or railway sleepers (ties)!

The following are presented therefore to give an indication of how large an Indian (or 'Asian') elephant is - when in the employ of man. Two of the images are taken from the Wikipedia page on the Delhi Durbar (and they won't enlarge), the other five come from the 'History of the Coronation Durbar 1903' compiled by order of the Viceroy and Governor-general of India by Stephen Wheeler and published by John Murray 1904.

They are not the best images but they are copyright-free and give a good idea of the bulk of one of these beasts, their size in comparison with humans - both natives of Asia and Europeans - and the lightweight nature of the structures they carry compared to the weight of the padding, saddle-blankets (large carpets!) etc..

Elephant Carriage of the Maharaja of Rewa - Delhi Durbar - 1903. [Wikipedia]

Show-off! This is what he arrived in from his home state. One of the facts people seem unaware of is that an elephant is a much better 'puller' than carrier, which is why the Raj used them to such good effect as heavy, siege or garrison artillery 'tractors'!

Trials have found they can carry about 4-times the load of a camel over/for the same distance/time; given that a camel would struggle to carry an Elephants saddle-blanket - you can see the problem of these 'forts' war-gamers are so enamoured of; right there!

Taken at the Retainers review (a sort of un-dress rehearsal?)- 1903

A frisky elephant rears-up, it would seem that his howdah is being carried behind him by humans, in two loads, the chair/throne behind and the canopy closer to the camera? They could be two halves of a loading dais though?

Elephants that had been marched hundreds or thousands of miles across the Alps or the whole of the Near-east would have been dressed in their 'forts' minutes before the battle - or at least between breakfast and the battle commencing! This points to a calling for a lightweight structure on two points, one; it has to be quickly maneuverable by the mahouts or fighting crew, two; someone - probably the elephant - has to drag it around on a carriage or sled between battles, sometimes for years?

But if it folded-up...or rolled-up...and was light enough to carry?

Leading Elephant, main body - State Entry 1903 - Scene in Chandni Chauk

This is a big beast, now; it's true they would have been using their prize specimens for an occasion such as this, but an army will be using prime examples too.

The following parade - State Entry 1903 - Scene in Chandni Chauk

Rich or poor, senior or junior I can't see any dignitaries riding an elephant here that is not twice the height of the attendants - at the shoulder - the head carries higher.

Lord and Lady Curzon 1903 - leading the State Entry past the Jama Musjid

This is an interesting shot as the European looks bigger and the elephant by default smaller, but Lord Curzon is high in a large throne - which looks bloody heavy and is no evidence to support the war gamers need for heavy forts, this is a fit, domestic elephant, walking a few miles after a good breakfast, he hasn't traversed Persia, in a drought nursing wounds while his ignorant Sarissa's beat him!

1903 - the rest of the parade following behind - Jama Musjid

Some of the following beasts appear to have very heavy structures on their backs, but - as we saw in the second image - they can be broken-down into man-portable loads. [Compare - Red-eye vs. Rapier] You can't make the forts that come with war-gaming elephants into man-portable loads, except the Italeri/Zvezda ones which are lightweight structures (on decent sized elephants!).

Lord and Lady Curzon arriving at the Durbar 1903 [wikipedia]

Another shot of the main-man, you can see from the scale of the mahout that Lord Curzon is looking bigger due to his solar-toupee and the bloody great throne, not because he's a giant of a man, although we wouldn't have sent dwarves to represent the Great White Monarchs!

There's more of this to come....

R ist fur Rote Teufeler

Apologies for the German grammar!

I have one box with all the GI's in, and another box for everything else (non-German), and we are into that box now, although I have an article in the queue left over from the GI box, it's stuck in Piacasa while I faff-around wondering what to do with the images, not that it's that important, they're the Tim Mee/Proctor and Gamble figures and I may bin them for now!

So instead I present the Red Devils in all their finery courtesy of Timpo, fine purveyors of toy soldiery! These are the basic six poses of the first series and are relatively easy to obtain. Armed with the LMG, a Sten/Stirling type thing (with a magazine of about 95 rounds!) and the FN Fal/SLR.

Although these are the first type Para's they are - within the Timpo Swoppet WWII range - technically type II figures as the Americans and Germans had had an earlier cruder incarnation with moulded-on weapons.

These are a bit of a mystery, they are either sun-faded Para's or figures so rare no one has got round to mentioning them before this moment? I have tried to re-produce the effect by leaving a spare red-beret in a jar of bleach on the window-sill in direct sunlight for about 6 months, but with no luck, so for now I'm assuming an SAS test-shot? Although the one on the left has been given a set of late-production legs, they come from a collection that could be dated from the 1950's to the early 1970's - both in conversation with the seller and by the contents of the rest of the stuff that came with them.


Second type Para's (third generation WWII figures), these along with their helmeted brethren are subject to extreme brittleness and will get rarer and rarer in the years to come as they succumb to fiddlers, being dropped and the vagaries of a global postal system!

The stabbing guy usually comes with a pink head and the proviso that you assume he's wearing brown gloves, I've given him an American Indians head as the Para's have had black soldiers for as long as I can remember. Also he's gone back a ways by swapping his SLR for a Lee Enfield SMLE!! While the officer has been watching too many old movies..."You Doity Raaat!".

The working parachutist, as kids we would replace the plastic 'chute with a white hankie and Mum was forever taking the staple out of the back-pack, sorting out all the little shroud-lines and putting it all back together again! The parachutes come with concentric circles in - the illustrated - green or blue and both black (definite) and white (I think), possibly also red but I'm not convinced.

The same moulding was used on both the German and American paratroopers with late versions of the Germans having moulded-on headgear, while the Brits and Yanks stuck with the plug-in beret or helmet - truth be told I'm not sure Timpo ever issued him with a British helmet but as there were two in the lot I gave one a 'head-swap'!