S is for Ships (and other vessels); Part 4 - Odds and Sods.

So - to a few other bits and bobs of a naval persuasion...

The metal; As the submarine (84mm in length) is clearly marked Crescent, we can assume that that is indeed who made it! They did make quite a few in this range, but they usually cost a bit so mine probably came in a mixed lot of some kind as I don't - as a rule - search this stuff out, I'm supposed to be a Toy Soldier collector, not a micro-scale vessel collector!

I always suspected the hollow ship was Crescent due to the colour being one they used on a lot of their figures, but it's unmarked and at 83mm; totally out of scale with the submarine (while being the same 'size'!), it's also a different style, so might be a penny toy or Edwardian board-game piece? The middle one (55mm) seems to be a WWI era destroyer (correct me!) or escort of some kind, is stamped 11 on the base and could be early...Authenticast, Wiking or that British company I can never remember the name of; Trafalgar? While the smallest (32mm) is almost certainly a board-game piece with a chrome/anodised finish on lead - the other two are die-cast mazak, but for now all three remain 'unknown'.

Back to plastic, the image top left is of some real odds in various sizes; the painted trawler/barge (or tanker?) being the largest at 5cm and manufactured in two parts with a hull I water-lined to match my micro-tanks about 35 years ago, might be from one of the HK ranges looked at above. The motor cruiser of similar size was from a Christmas cracker, the two little ships (silver and red) used to come in the very small crackers for putting on Christmas trees, and when we were kids we had a handful (very small handful!) of these including a submarine, all in silver/gunmetal so the red one may be a bit later.

The smallest one - an MTB with spots of red paint (2cm) is probably from a board game again, the brown one might be from a kit (I haven't subjected you to the bag of ship-kit's boats...very tedious and all so small!), the scruffy blue thing is - I think - a 'Battleships' piece and the three-funneled liner is probably a Hong Kong dolls-house toy, it's hard styrene plastic, factory painted.

The large bi-coloured liner (14cm) in the next two images is an early British bath/beach toy possibly by Kleeware, Betterware or Independent Moulders or someone like that. The red-hulled vessel (75mm) in the same pictures is a German premium from the 1950/60's and I'm pretty sure it's one of the items made by Siku and supplied to all sorts of food companies, long before they got a name producing die-cast vehicles.

The final shot shows the accessories from a Matchbox Harbour play-set, they are approximately 6.5cm.

These (14cm) are interesting, I always thought they were something like Bismark or Tirpitz, but checking just now think they are Iowa/New Jersey'ish. They seem to be copies of the HK incarnation of the Tri-ang Minic vessel (with the wheels) but I don't remember either the British or HK ranges having non-British vessels?

My Submarine sub-collection (groan!); I always wanted a motorised sub. as a kid, but never had one, and would like to get a few more now, there were many versions, even Airfix made one, this one (33cm long) is a more recent HK one with a built-in battery-housing, most took the slip-on motor unit which was always an orangey-red and white - whoever made it!

The next largest (18cm) is a rubber-band powered Honk Kong novelty, the fins (of which there were four to go in the holes you can see in the photograph) are polyethylene and have become so brittle (rare for HK plastic), they languish in a bag waiting an advance in adhesive technology!! The sub itself is polystyrene and relatively stable.

Top-right is a Hong Kong bath toy (95mm), tubes attached to the conning-tower masts would allow you to raise or lower the sub by sucking until you got a mouthful of soapy water or blowing until your ears hurt! It was used as a premium by Kellogg's among others but could usually be found as a rack toy along with a similar diver figure.

Next to that going left - is a baking-soda submarine (120mm), also a premium, but more recent, while the three small ones down the bottom in yellow (67mm, three blobs on the tower, 1990's/current), and red or grey (55mm, four masts, 1950/60's) are also baking-soda subs. I've seen it suggested somewhere that you should use 'Baking-powder not baking-soda', as my understanding is that 'baking-powder' is just baking 'soda' with preservatives, I suspect that sticking to soda will prove to be the cheaper fuel-source, and burn cleaner!

Going right from them is a blow/balloon powered sub. (85mm) again; probably both a premium and a rack-toy, while the final example (with a missile on the deck - 95mm) might belong to one of the sets looked at above, or a similar carded HK range?

S is for Ships (and other vessels); Part 5 - Bigger boys!

Looking at some of the larger vessels, we have something a bit special from Germany; an S-boat and some nice Celluloid bits form Japan, both nations - at the time of likely production - on the 'other side'!

This is one of the ten things I should try to save from a fire, at first appearance it looks like a Hong Kong item, and if it had come in a bag of dusty bits I'd probably be telling you; "It's almost certainly an HK item", but it 'ain't...it's German, and it's actually 'almost certainly' from the era of the Third Reich.

The box is the same type of box the German wooden tractors, the plaster railway figures from Berger we looked at a month or so ago and German Christmas-baubles come in, the paper wrap is more reminiscent of the earlier half of the 20th Century and the spring-loaded firing mechanism is very 'European' in execution.

The clincher is that something - almost certainly an Eagle - has been painted-out on both sides of the wheelhouse...for export? or to comply with the Allied de-Nazification program?

So why does it look HK? Because back in the early days all cheap plastics looked the same, and the Germans in the immediate post-war period through to my childhood in the 1960's/early '70's were second only to Hong Kong/Japan in the production of plastic toys and novelties.

The paper wrap with the torpedoes in (and out!) and a close up of the finger-operated firing mechanism. I can't work out if the torpedoes are plastic or wooden, if they are wooden it would be more proof of the likelihood of the origin, but I think they are plastic, it's just hard to tell and I'm not going to start scraping the paint off!

The S-boat (Marked S-71, with a '71'painted below the engraved version) is about 125mm long, the Japanese blow-moulded celluloid gun-boat next to it is a tad smaller at 100mm. This Website reports S-71 as being lost; "Hit by artillery in battle with British units in the Channel" in 1943 and was a real vessel, another reason to doubt it's HK origins.

 Next to them is another Celluloid vessel, this appears to have dome sort of mechanism in the base, but I can't work out what it is, even with a jeweller's 'eye' and a torch. It may be only a weight, but seems to have brass and white-metal components? And I owe thanks to Pam Taylor (Kleeware collector supreme!) of Wales for the tall-ship which is 6cm long.

[Added 24th November 2013...I saw another one the other day, the mechanism is a rusted-up spring return form a novelty tape-measure!]

Other larger odds and sods (we'll look at the bulk of the bigger vessels and landing craft on other days in a year or two, this is enough bobbing about on the briney for me for a while!); The top image shows two liners marked 'GERMANY' (9.5cm) and will most likely be Manurba or Jean, and also 'look' like Hong Kong product. They have an polyethylene upper deck and a polystyrene hull. The other liner is a whistle (7.5cm) and probably an early British product in a flecked-styrene polymer.

I don't know how the hovercraft got in this lot - well I do; they were 'to hand'! The one on the left is the one currently in Poundland from Funtastic, the other was a common rack-toy in the 1980's and I've seen them painted on some of the Blogs I link to here in the last couple of years, and they came-up quite well. They are a vauge HO-guage type size/scale thing...

The small sailing vessel (3cm) is a Christmas cracker toy, the yellow tug (65mm) is a recent (1970's?) baby's bath toy, the other two tugs (55mm) are the 1950/60's equivalents.

S is for Ships (and other vessels); Part 6 - Manurba and Montaplex

As we have seen before on the Blog; Montaplex are not too bothered about scale when it comes to the contents of their little envelopes and The Battle of Salerno is no exception!

We get a Spanish copy of a Hong Kong copy of a Manurba fast patrol boat and a small four-engined bomber, there are other contents - see below - but first let's look at the other fast boats...

A carded set of the Hong Kong effort, but look at all the little figures...bargain! From the colours and weapon/accessory types, you can tell they tie-in with some of the mini-trucks I looked at back in the Autumn. They are roughly HO scale (the figures) which makes the boats no bigger than Lake Geneva motor-launches!

Close-up of the HK boats, with a few other MTB's; the bright green one is a modern Kellogg's premium, re-issuing an old 60's toy, the black one is a Manurba original, the dark green one is a variant of the HK ones but with an ensign instead of a figure, the pink-decked one is another HK design entirely and the little silver one is unknown but probably HK. All between 50 and 60 millimetres.

The other contents of the Montaplex set are these two sprues of little mirco-vessels, about the size of the board-game playing-pieces in the next post (part 7), they have been 'worked-on', but the name 'LIDIA' remains of a couple of the ships, and must point to a company before Montaplex got the mould?

S is for Ships (and other vessels); Part 7 - Games and things...

Finishing this seven-part overview of small toy vessels finds us looking at the very small ones, mostly board game playing pieces, but also the Hong Kong copies of Minic ships and some cereal premiums.

So, most of you should recognise at least one of the above lots as three of them are from one or another version of Battleships, and anybody who hasn't had a set of Battleships in his past has had a deprived childhood - in my opinion!

The red plastic ones top left and inset - right, are actually from a game called Up Periscope by Denis Fisher, and the inset shows the depth-charge and torpeado pieces, while the main image has one (right-hand cargo-ship) with the stud removed to make it 'waterline'.

The vinyl ships are from a travelling set of Battleships, the little silver one is from the Merit pocket-set and the grey ones in the other inset come from an unknown source probably MB Games - see below. For size; the vinyl carrier is 30mm and the little silver MTB is 15mm long. The grey set are between 26mm (MTB) and 65mm (the carrier).

This set (red and yellow), is from MB Games - Germany, and belongs to a game called Submarine Hunt, you can see they are similar too but not the same as the grey set from the previous lot, however the shot-pegs are identical - hence my suspicions that that set too is MB - vessels vary between 28-45mm.

The other (clear and smoked plastic) set is from Salvo! by Palitoy for Parker Games and vary from 30 to 40mm. The styling - all 'groovy' Habitat perspex dates this to the early 1970's?

The set illustrated in the two left-hand images are Quaker cereal premiums, and I think this is a complete or near complete set, the inset shows a variation of the Empress of Britain without tonnage and a redesign of the whole face of the male half of the mould.

Queen Elizabeth 83,673 Tons - 9omm
United States 53,329 Tons - 86mm
Queen Mary 81,238 Tons - 85mm
 Liberte 51,840 Tons - 83mm
Tina Onassis 27,853 Tons - 77mm
Mauretania 35,677 Tons - 64mm
Nieuw Amsterdam 36,640 Tons - 62mm
Arcadia 29,734 Tons - 61mm
Edinburgh Castle 28,705 Tons - 61mm
Empress of Britain 25,516 Tons - 53.5mm

The grey vessels top-right are from an unknown sourse and are both well detailed and quite modern in design, they may be from one of the Japanese kit manufactures, sold as war-gaming pieces? The carrier is 75mm the smaller submarine a mere 45mm.  

03-09-2016 Now ID'd with the help of Uncle Brian - Silvercorn.

The last picture shows the 4 sculpts from the MB Games Axis & Allies (Sub; 35mm, Cargo vessel; 38mm, battleship; 50mm and the carrier 55mm) and 3 of the old Lido ships from the 1950's dime-store cards (55-60mm long).

These are a lovely little thing, they are mostly Hong Kong plastic copies of the smaller models from the Tri-ang Minic mini ships, in various grey-blues, the painted tug seems to be another HK copy, but HK was responsible for a revival of the original moulds and they may have put this in with one of the bigger ships? the pale grey tug, while a HK copy - seems to be from another source, being a little 'heavier' all round.

The lifeboat is a Minic original from the launch-station next to the pier and comes in at about 7mm (I forgot to measure it and it's back in storage!) the tugs are 4cm with the larger warships 9cm.

M is for More again; More Starlux...

A round-up that will serve as an introduction as it will always appear at the top of the posts below in tag-searches for Starlux.

The top image shows how they used the same pose over and over again, they are all slightly different, so it was copying not pantographing, the final figure is probably a home-cast piracy.

The middle image is a scale comparison, with 25 and 60mil Paratroopers (regular not FFL!) and an early infantryman in 50mm with his 25mm compatriot. Also the Accessories - in this case a range-finder in 25 and 54/60mm were reproduced in different sizes.

The last photograph starts with 40mm figures on the left and runs down to a 20mm sailor. The guy with the side-cap and briefcase is actually from a range of O-gauge - otherwise - civilian figures supplied to or for model railways. Then there are 40 and 35 mil Solido figures, 25mm helmeted figures (one - the Bazooka No.2 is only about 23mm) and the sailor, although the sailors, pirates and Civilians were reproduced in both 20mm and 1:87th/HO-gauge, the military don't seem to have been.

Bazooka No.2 in 23'ish and 54mm (1:32 scale) along with various plastic colour treatments for the accessories, the 54mil one is an early production figure again - with the ovoid base. For some reason Starlux never painted the bases of the support weapons and accessories, if they had they would have matched their figures better?

French Paratroop mortar-line, with a bit of a scrap going on at the far end! The ones with the darker berets have been 'worked on' to create British para's with the beret flattened to the other side and I think the jackets have been painted too. They looked so casually painted I didn't put them in the paint stripper that the rest of the lot received, they now languish in a bag waiting a better paint-job!

H is for Helmets

These are the Starlux helmeted infantry, and can be used as 1950's GI's, Bundeswehr or similar troops, although they will have been meant to be French Infantry or Foreign Legion.

The main shot here shows a group of these figures in a marbled plastic. The photograph bottom right shows an early figure with round base and an intermediate one with painted neck-tie and shell-case along with two late examples.

The lower left shot has various treatments of the stretcher-team and medic, early round-based to the left and a very late apple-green one to the top right, note he has a third base type - square, rather than the common oblong.

Like all Starlux they are produced in various sizes and finishes, the upper shot has figures in 35mm supplied to Solido and issued with their military vehicles in UN markings, the lower image has more die-cast accessories, the biggest is another Solido supply, this time unpainted, the two seated figures seem to be for a smaller model (Majorette or French Dinky?) while the last figure is from a turret or cupola, I have since - these images were taken - acquired a late apple-green version of this figure (with both hands!) so the model he was supplied for must have been on the market for a while.

25/30mm helmeted figures in various finishes, plastic colours and paint styles, note the sand bases on some of the dark plastic ones, the occasional painting of white gaiters, and a Solido type one in the smaller size.

C is for Command

You didn't think I was going to fob you off with one photo' of three paratroopers in two poses tonight, did you? How could you think so low of me! These are the rest of the 'command' group, that I think the two green berets from the Legion (post below) are supposed to go with.

A white-helmeted Monkey and three Charlies in the standard blue and red kepi. Actually there are only two Charlie poses, but one of them has alternate arms either holding binoculars or a swagger-stick.

Where you find brass, you find barracks, where you find barracks you find Stags, this stag is helmeted and probably sold as a stand-alone tourist item? Both scenics are Starlux.

For the uninitiated;

Charlies = Henrys = Rodneys = Officer Class (Brass)
Monkeys = Red Caps = The Military Police
Stag = Stag guard, stag duty or 'stagging-on' (going on guard duty)

['Regimental Police' are just fat, bald, can't-pass-a-BFT-so-send-him-to-HQ Company, useless, filthy, swine - hey Joe? Leave it Hugh, it was a long time ago!]

REP is for Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes...

...and not what I thought it was the other day! Only the French could buck the trend of maroon for paratroops berets! More 25mm Starlux, I've tagged them as both Styrene and Cellulose-acetate polymers because Starlux used both, but these appear to be polystyrene.

These seem to be not so much 'hard to find' as just a very small range, I've seen these two poses quite often but there doesn't seem to be a any fighting or marching poses as there are with the kepi, helmet and red or blue beret wearing ranges, nor do they seem to have the musicians of the other sets, just 'officer' and 'radio-man', I think the same is true of the 54mm range? possibly part of a 'command' set with the MP and the blue-kepi'ed regular army officers we'll look at soon.

FFL is for French Foreign Legion

I've been fighting with the labels/tag list all weekend, but I think I'm wining, however lots of work still to do there, while I was visiting all my old posts, it struck me that the blurb varies greatly from post to post (apart from the fact that the early posts all have an 'info. above the photo' format), sometimes due to laziness versus an attack of verbiage, sometimes because the photographs or subject matter are pretty self explanatory against other times the subject needing a full explanation...

...with this lot - for instance - you don't want a lot of waffle from me, they are well known and dealt with in several publications, so I don't have to type much (more!)...

Starlux, Officer of the French Foreign Legion; 54mm on the left, late - unpainted 30mm in the middle and a 25mm to the right.

Support company lay down some covering fire while the flame-thrower works round the flank protected by a couple of riflemen - all 25mm. The rock formations are Starlux, I'm not sure about the pine-tree vignette in orangey-yellow cellulose acetate! But it is almost certainly French production.

We've seen these before on the blog, the end-of-the-road-show produced these unpainted boxed sets still on the sprue.

A scan of an old photograph previously published in Plastic Warrior's off-shoot - One Inch Warrior, in black & white, my 25mm FFL musicians.

Er...That's it!

S is for Stig, The Stig, moonlighting as a crane driver!

This post will probably only be of interest to UK readers, or people who follow the Top Gear team on-line...I caught 'The Stig' moonlighting as a TEREX crane driver for the British Army, obviously the BBC aren't paying him enough to stick to very fast (or even reasonably priced) cars!

This is a still from a film I took of two of these beasts out for a drive the other day, probably from the Rushmoor vehicle testing facility down the road (this was shot in Fleet, Hampshire) and apparently being driven by civilians in full-face motorcycle helmets...is it an Alien II?!

M is for Motron and Multimac

A complicated one tonight, when I first saw these they were under the Motron brand and while I took time to study the packaging and note that they used Roco-Mintanks figures for the illustrations on the cards I didn't buy them. A few years later I saw this and bought it, although by that time I had also corralled a few loose bits and pieces in a tub...

Some sort of dozer contraption called '№ 9074c - Power Shovel'. The inset top right shows a very good copy of the driver from the Tomy Zoid's mechanical dinosaur sets, while the bottom shot shows the 'BW [Bundeswehr] Troops Marching' from Roco, painted yellow and running around doing admin stuff!

Both the use of the Roco figures and the inclusion of the Tomy driver give an overall size of around HO guage (1:87th scale) for these sets, while the sets at the bottom are nearer 35mm.

The loose bits I've also collected, there are various bits that have the familiarity of having been seen elsewhere, not least the 'knuckles' either side of the cab/cockpit. Again a shot of the Tomy rip-off driver, or were they both buying him in from another sub-supplier?

I think I've seen three or four front-unit designs now and about 6 add-on items of heavy-equipment or weapons, but the follow-on unit seems to be the same basic item each time. Although the basic units are the same, the front units have most of their items glued-on while the rear unit's are all detachable.

Also carrying the Multimac trade mark is this Ocean Discovery box; Item No. 92884W - Octopathfinder Set', which is more of a construction set, half-way between Lego Bionicles and the Tomy Zoids. This figure (identified by Bill over at Moonbase) also bears a resemblance to something, but I can't put my finger on it...Cylons?

If you click on 'Silverlit' in the tag list you will get a partial list of the other items in both ranges, there used to be a whole list of Motron stuff somewhere on the Wibbly Wobbly Way (Toy Chest? Toy Locker?), and one day I'll sort the list out properly.

So Silverlit seems - on the face of it - to be the modern equivalent of the old unbranded hollow-horse guys frantically copying Giant, but targeting a more mainstream company (Tomy), or are they a (one of many) Tomy/Takara subsidiary?

B is for Bell

And so to a mates house with two other friends for a chin-wag and an all-day breakfast in the local cafe, one of our number bringing a few items from his private collection for a bit of a 'show and tell', among which was this beauty.

I don't know how many of you remember the Jig-Toy puzzles I covered way back at the start of this blog (Here), but one of the companies was called Bell and they had a distinctive logo. Bell went on to leave/sell/donate their puzzle moulds to Merit, whether they ever left this mould to Merit is another question...probably never to be answered!

A near mint (given it's likely to be between 50 and 70+ years old?) boxed set of British soldiers in an early plastic which could be a styrene polymer or a cellulose acetate or even one of the phenolic compounds, it was hard to tell and there wasn't much smell to go-on as they had travelled some distance that morning and been properly aired, not to mention - the almost total paint coverage meaning there was little to release a smell from. [See note below...]


Although there is nothing to indicate such an act on the packaging, I wonder if they were issued as part of a war-bond drive or other fund-raiser, as the lack of poses and crude detail when other better soldiers were readily available in metal and composition (pre-war) or metal and plastic (post war) would suggest a tight window of saleability between the late 1930's and late 1940's...making this among the earliest sets of British plastics composition figures.

They are around 70mm and somewhat reminiscent of the products in composition made by Brent or - more specifically; Zang (for Timpo) and when he first got them out that's what I thought they were - a set of Zang standing infantry!

Having now obtained a scruffy one for my own collection, I can confirm that while they look plastic, they are actually a pumice-based 'Elastolene / Timpolene' type composition, tag list changed to reflect that!

W is for The Works (rant alert at the end)

I know someone else Blogged the 'Henge' the other night but in my defence I've been covering The Works and the little treats they bring us for over a year or two now and the amount of stuff useful to figure collectors they have right now is worth a whole post in itself.

Apart from the items below and The Boys Book of Arthur Ward...sorry 'Airfix'...(it's the spine you know!), they also have plenty of the Clash of Heros figures I blogged the other day (I'm picking one up every time I pass and will give them a separate post when I have a few more). Also if you remember the Woodie key-ring figure from Toy Story I got in the Pound Shop the other day - well The Works have the whole set, along with several Disney princess/fairy types, some Winnie the Pooh characters and other Disney key-rings.

So to Stonehenge, it's small and mine had two part 6's (or part 9's? it's hard to tell as they are placed next to each other on the display and read 'each-other' upside-down...does that make any sense?!), you can see the second one jammed into the larger orifice top right, this - of course - may be why it's been remaindered in the first place!

But it's not TOO small, and buying two sets will enable you to fill in the printed blanks with the spares, or make a more ordered one contemporaneous with Caesar's march across the South of England. It's £1.99 for Christ's sake...get three! There are no instructions but you don't need them as the blanks are numbered on the little puzzle-base and the 'polystone' poly-stones are also numbered, just the problem of how to deal with the two number 6/9's!

They are in the kids book section and the box is surprisingly small...

July 2015  - I bough a second one a few days later and it had different stones for No.'s 6/9, the reason there's space around the one above, some packer had miss-placed a duplicate!

The Works are also clearing the Tron Legacy stuff, most of which is as cack as the film was reported to be - I read as many reviews as I can and aggregate the result to decide whether to see a film these days and the message on this one was don't bother if you are remotely fond of the original!

Most of the the toys are silly little micro-scale flying things which bare no resemblance to the film I knew and loved and there is a second range of 4 or 5" action figures, you can tell how much time I gave them as I don't know what size they were!

But...the 'Light -cycles' are about 54mm and one (Flynn's - the white one) is very reminiscent of the original film, so I have tracked down 3 of 4 and will get the other as soon as I see it. Of interest is the pricing...Fleet - affluent London commuter dormitory...£2.99, Newbury - Rural market town with local authority overspill from Reading and the unpaid gardeners of baronets...£1.99!

Above are two of the Light-cycles from Tron, below is the booklet from the Stonehenge boxed-set and a remaindered book by James May, his is down to £1.99 from £9.99 or a four-fifths reduction, Arthur Ward's was £6.99 from £19.99 or approximately two-thirds, from this unscientific evidence we can deduce that James' book is the cackier one, and having read them both I can concur...by a long shot.

This is one of two of his titles in The Works at the moment, can I suggest he sticks to whittering-on about cars instead of giveing Hornby/Scalextric/Airfix/Humbrol Ltd.Inc.Co.Corp.Int. another three hours of free advertising on the Licence-fee payer! Bloody BBC...

It seems that eventually everything comes to The Works...all you have to do is wait (they have Airfix Spitfire kits with paint as well at the moment!), with the Hemlock & Wendel (or whatever they are called - Wynndot & Bendall?) Olympic mascot key-rings currently announced at 7 quid each and the Works' Disney ones at about a pound I wouldn't mind betting they'll have the Jemmy & Kendal key-rings for the same price in 18 months time, buckets of'em!

Right - that's Disney, the Olypics, the BBC, our biggest native toy company and James May whinged about in one rant...a fine nights work me-thinks!

M is for Marching...up and down the SQUAY'ER!

Took these at Sandown the other day, rather outside my budget, but nice figures and to be able to compare them was a bit of a treat, thanks to Adrian of Mercator again, link to right, he still has a few of these.

I think these are Luftwaffe on the left and regular Wehrmacht (1935-1945) infantry on the right with a Swiss soldier to the left of the lower image. After the war Hausser were allowed to produce figures of other armies only for a while, and when they were allowed to produce native troops they were restricted to ceremonial and marching figures only, regular units only, no NASDP, SS, SA, SD or other Nazi units or uniforms and none of the personality figures that had been such a feature of the pre-war catalogues.

There was also a guy with a full pack (top left) and a paint variation of the marching figure without pack (bottom right) along with a cleaner Swiss soldier in parade uniform. As Elastolin were limited to these figure types only there must be a wide range of variations to find?

C is for Culcha' In'it, Ja'nowhat'a'meen Guyie!

Some more of the cultural referances to toy soldiers and model kits I've collected over the years...

Spin Collective Wall Stickers

Home Made I love these!

Melting Plastic Stefan Gross, and a Flikr album Here

He's Moved......from his bench!

More Wall Art Margaret Roleke's Barbie in a War Zone

Another Little Boat Some people do it so much better than James May!

There are still more to come...