R is for as Rare as Rockinghorse-shit

Speaking of George Erik as I was...er...n't (Reamsa figure in next post below!); as well as designing for Reamsa, George also designed for various UK manufacturers and often re-used a pose. One of the more original poses from his hands was the crawling figure from the Turkish WWI set, and it also got re-used for the Reamsa US Cavalry set...

...and for the Kentoys set of three Space Police Commandos. This is a hard lot to track down, I photographed this on Adrian's stand at a show, the set was only three poses, with a further three 'Terra Nova' figures, the whole to enhance the Dan Dare set. The Terra Novans don't seem to have left the factory for retail (they can be seen in one or two of James Opie's books - as he owns the test-shots. and the Plastic Warrior Kentoy special), while the Space Police Commandos only got a limited distribution.

Paint's poor on this survivor, and the disc shaped badge on the shoulder should be yellow.

M is for 'Mostly' Unknown!

When I did the WWI post the other day I nearly included this image as a source of potential WWI figures, but realised it needed a toy soldier related text, and as that was a PPE rant, I held it over. These are all either unknown or of an early 20th century style that makes them potentials for WWI.

The first figure on the top row is a Bata figure from Czechoslovakia, he's really a later figure, but with the pack and puttees looks the part for WWI, he's also that rare thing, a true rubber figure who doesn't melt into a puddle like so much of the contemporaneous Italian-made rubber production.

Next to him is a Marx re-issue - probably polypropylene, from the old hand-painted 'Warriors of the World' mould, and while technically an 8th Army/North Africa WWII figure, could just as easily be marching to Baghdad in the First war.

Then we have a complete unknown - definitely polypropylene, I think he's from a construction site toy, but the little tin safety-helmet looks like our old piss-pot, so he could be painted up as a WWI chappie! I have a mental note that he's from New Zealand, but suspect that's actually bollocks and he's just a Hong Kong 'generic'?

Last one in the top line-up is the Reamsa Turk, falling wounded in the Dardanelles - defending his homeland, the best way a soldier should die, not attacking some god-forsaken shit-hole thousands of miles from home. This is a late unpainted example; he's a nice figure and I wish I had the rest of the set!

Bottom left would also seem to be a Spanish figure, but buggered if I could find him on Google the other night, even trying search terms like 'Spanish Ceremonial Cavalry Modern', Spanish Lancers, etc...Included here as he would paint-up to a nice German cavalryman of the immediate pre-war period? Anyone know who made him, or what unit he represents?

The final figure would make a nice British officer from either war, and could be in WWI Palestine/Iraq, Gallipoli, WWII North Africa or even Burma. He turns up quite a bit, in charity shops and vintage toy soldier shows, he's metal, and while it's probably an alloy, it's not the granular Zamac/Mazac of die-cast toy vehicles, being a heavier material which holds fine detail. I'm sure he is actually a tourist keepsake of a Hong Kong Policeman from the pre-1997 period, and must have been quite a common purchase.

B is for Black Storm

No - not today's unseasonal weather, pointing to permanent damage of the ecosystem caused by yours truly and his fellow monkeys, but rather the first major change to the Deetail Knights range, the simple expedient of changing the colour! Actually the first change was from realistic to silly-chrome shields, but that move seems to have occurred at the same time as the new vinyl colour.

We're only looking at the mounted poses here as - eventually (a day or two) we will have looked at the foot figures above! Just a few colour variations and an unpainted one who sneaked through.

Sorting for a dealer friend (which kicked-off the original book idea), and all six bursting-forth upon the stakes of the English long-bowmen....Well? They've got black armour...they've gotta'be bad guys, and none badder than the Fr...we're all friends now!

Q is for Quandary

Can anybody help with information on these, they keep turning up in bulk, this is a shot of the contents of two lots and I have a third larger sample in storage. Clearly designed like Christmas Cracker or Gum-ball machine charms, and probably to be pined to a lapel through the loop of the tail.

The thing is; I suspect a corporate link to them, I used to think the British Rail 'unicycle' lion (hence the photo!), but he was arched, the British Lion egg lions also doesn't fit as he had a crown, as do 'royal' lions...does anybody know where these keep appearing from and what they were intended for? Staff? Flag-days? Premiums...if so for what?

They are made of a dense glass-like polystyrene or a late phenolic resin polymer and are sculpted with a clearly defined collar. If it was the odd one or two I would dismiss them as the above mentioned charms, such as the little black cats that have been put in Christmas Crackers for the longest time (in glass, coal, slate and all polymers), but the numbers that turn up sugest something more...intriguing?

Other similar lions I've ruled out include the lion of Judea (crown with cross and standard on pole), the Rhodesian Forces lion (facing forward, holding tusk) and the Wesley collage lion; other paw up, tail curls round, under itself.

L is for Limey

Corr'blimy lauve-a-duck [there are laws against that now] Meh'reey Pop'uns...it's a box-ticker and no'ew mistake!

Marx - smaller 54mm size, WWII British Infantry with early above and reissues below (if I'm not mistaken?)...that's it...click on the image and it gets bigger, click again and you need to scroll to see it all!

P is for Pop-waist Personnel

The second development in the Deetail knights history (approximately 1984-9) was/were these additions, I've seen them described as 'like swoppets', but with limited articulation in one plane - at the waist - and the 'swivel' moniker more accurate for the later knights we looked at below somewhere, I call them the pop-waist knights, or; Poppets - which is the title of various plastic bead sets of the time!

Six foot figures, some of these are a bit static or wooden, and the colours, for the most part are a tad wishy-washy for heraldry methinks But, they were more poses for the battlefield, and when you're 8, 10, or 12-years old that's all that matters really! And several of them were heavily armed...bargain!

By swapping weapons, you could have guys with three swords, one in each hand and a spare at the wiast should one slip out of a bloodied steel glove!

I don't seem to be the only one who thought the colours were a bit weak as they regularly turn-up with no decoration at all, just a coat of the silver paint - possibly produced at the end of the run to counter the plain-gold Great Shield guys?

There were also a set of mounted legs, and it was in this guise, with a coat of gold paint that they were carried through to the Great Shield range in 1988 as 'enemy', from where they would march-on into the mid-1990's.

C is for Corporate Carnage

So, the mawkish sentimentality has started, we have four years of pointless hand-wringing, international glad-handing, historical naval-gazing, looking back, looking forward and rewriting to look forward to, along with endless anecdotes and the minutia of 'social history' to face.

I'll get mine out of the way now; my great-uncle Ernest was gassed in WWI, his breath rattled like a miner's but he lived to a ripe-old age. I never got to talk to him about his experiences, I don't know what his opinion of the Germans was (his sister was married to one), and I don't know where he was gassed, but I do know he saw things and experienced things that civilians - especially vacuous, money-grubbing fuckers like David Cameron - can never begin to understand, they just can't - if you live in a developed country and haven't served in the forces, you don't (and will never know) how frightened, cold and wet, hungry, tired or dirty you can be and still manage to function.

Actually I have two anecdotes...the other being a dreaded 'social history' one, and all the more fascinating for having nothing to do with the combat in Western Europe. Uncle Ernest's sister's future husband was being 'evicted' from Nottingham city centre by gangs of stone-throwing miners, who burned his German refugee parent's butchers shop down, more than once! Because, when food is short, burning butchers is the way to go, if the rioters were alive today they would all be voting UKIP!

Later 05/08/2014 - It's even more interesting...Uncle Ernest was one of the German's sons, he served with the Sherwood Foresters and was gassed by his parents old countrymen!...his brother marrying an English girl he met after the Nottingham 'eviction', the parents having set-up a soup kitchen to serve the locals (for free) before their shop was burnt down! AND taken British citizenship as soon as they arrived in the country, something that probably saved them from forced repatriation by a right-wing government! Even if they lost their shop...that's the patriotism scoundrels run to!

Crescent WWI Infantry - five of six poses

Poppy-red - this IS a vaguely political post. There is a third anecdote; I think my grandfather Hall was co-opted from the Merchant Navy into the Indian Navy during the First World War but I'll have to check that one. Later - He was co-opted from the MN to the RN on his 18th Birthday and served with HMS London at Gallipoli (JTSH). The point is, we all have links to the 'Great' war (nothing great about it, unless you were in arms sales!), although a lot of people don't necessarily consider it, realise it or dwell on it.

The problems between Russia and the neighbouring Ukraine and Georgia, in Transnistria, the - hardly mentioned in the media - 'bloody clashes' on the Armenian/Azerbaijan border, the Kurdish question, Cyprus, and all the problems in the Middle East (Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Libya and in the wings the undemocratic Saudi and Bahrain funding it all with the Americans) are the here-today legacy of the First World War....the "war to end all wars" is still being fought, having already led to to a far more horrific second world conflagration in the 1940's.

Crescent WWI Cavalry - complete set of three poses

Tonight we were invited to switch out our lights at 10 o'clock, why?

The nations street-lights remained lit, so there was no effect noticeable by the crew of the international space station, the last crew of which contained a Japanese crew commander, Russian craft commander and US astronaut. The dead have been worm-food for more than eighty years and couldn't give a stuff if the lights are on or off, indeed a lot of them left houses that didn't have electric light and wouldn't until the 1950's! And the declaration of war was at 11am not 10pm?

It was a combination of grandstanding by the leadership of Europe today, along with the usual mawkish-pap from the tabloids.

Today's leaders being no more than puppets of big-business, who having nearly allowed our civilisation to collapse a few years ago still have few ideas for long-term recovery other that a lurch to the right, an series of attacks on the vulnerable, the drip-drip imposition of draconian police-state practice (water cannon, really? In Britain?), drip-drip privatisation of the NHS, schools, prisons and government science while the welfare state - our (the 'peoples') reward for the sacrifices in both wars - is slowly dismantled. The dead must be turning in their graves.

Armies in Plastic (AIP) - recent production

I have been listening to the WWI day-by-day thing on BBC Radio 4, and it seems plain to me that all the nations who went to war this week one-hundred years ago, did so with the best of intentions, or because they felt obliged to, with one notable exception.

Serbia went to war because it had to defend itself, Russia went to war because it had signed a treaty to defend Serbia, France had a treaty with Russia, Belgium wanted to defend its sovereignty against German incursion and Britain had a treaty with Belgium to help defend it...looks like the Germans are the bad boys huh?

Well, no actually, the German Kaiser had tried as hard as everyone else to avoid war, but he had a treaty with Austro-Hungary, and they were the bad boys. They wanted war, they wanted Serbia and they ignored every opportunity to avoid war presented to them by Serbia, Russia and France. And - once they had destroyed three empires (Russian, Ottoman and their own) they gave the world the little Austrian corporal who would lead Europe into a second Armageddon in 1939. they then elected a Nazi (Jorg Haider) to party leader in the '89 coalition while the equally divisive Kurt Waldheim was president. All the while trying to lay the blame for both wars at the feet of the Germans, next-door.

So while our poxy tabloids and equally poxy football supporters continue the risible anti-German thing (which gets thinner with every drubbing they give us), it is actually Austria we need to watch - every time!

Marx - Various Cadets, Rough Riders and WWI - original and re-issues

Britain's going poppy-mad! Would say The Sun, if they hadn't already come up with something more childish, or better rhyming...

Four cultural phrases are being massacred like cotton-mill boys in a Flanders trench at the moment; 'Great War' and 'War to End All Wars' I've dealt with above, then we get Samuel Johnson's "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" which was supposed to refer to people like Hitler and his henchmen, Jorg Haider and his ilk who did so well in the recent Euro-elections, yeah, even unto Farage with his pint and fag, or the 'Russians' in Ukraine - yet the 'i' newspaper (and by association The Independent?) today seemed to be linking it to the feeling/s in Europe a hundred years ago.

I don't buy it, the patriotism that accompanied the mobilisations then was the genuine love of the people for the men they were sending to a war they all knew was going to be destructive (they had the Boer, Franco-Prussian and American Civil wars in the popular memory, they had some idea what technology was doing to the industrial-death business), even as they all tried to convince themselves it would 'all be over by Christmas'.

The other was today's 'Lights Out' quote from the then British Foreign Secretary - Sir Edward Gray; "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time", well they weren't, they didn't and indeed would get brighter through the rest of the century, although I think they've dimmed a bit under the post '79 capitalist form of plutocracy/Corporatocracy we now suffer under.

Where the division in wealth is greater than it has been for a hundred years, the politicians are as dumb as those who held a war none of them wanted [except Austro-Hungary] and where the poor, disabled, unemployed and elderly are seeing real hardship in the 6th richest country on Earth while big business pays no or minimal tax, replaces jobs with technology or shifts jobs to the other side of the world faster than the politicians can hide the unemployed/under-employed figures in semantics, moved goal-posts or slave work-schemes and where the labour movement is fighting with itself to re-claim rights and conditions we've fought-for once already.

I'm not offering solutions, I'm not offering an alternative history, I'm just saying; as you listen to all the speeches to be made in the next 4 years (both the WWI 100-year stuff AND the WWII 70-year stuff), realise that it is all going to be a mixture of lost/false/falsified history, false memory, political expediency, mawkish sentimentality (usually mindless/thoughtless), the tabloid's need to sell you tomorrow's cat-litter and the inability of anyone in power to admit that any of it was wrong, or learn from it, while constantly looking for a PR photo-op!

Another Angry Voice

Later - 5/8/14 - As exemplified by today's 'Wreathgate' in which - for future readers - yesterdays wreath-laying in some god-forsaken Belgian backwater has been marred by the accusation that the leader of the opposition somehow failed in his duty to show due respect for the fallen by not writing a personal message on his wreath while David 'Dave' 'Fuckwit' Cameron did write a heartfelt message on his...only for later investigation to reveal that the wreaths from the rest of the bigwigs - Scottish, Welsh and Irish National Assemblies + others - were written in the same handwriting as each other...probably by a junior gopher from the signage crew of the PR team for the organisers, who then handed the wreaths out just before the ceremony.

Proving several things;

*None of them usually buy a wreath, or write a personal message, the wreaths are lain-on at the tax payers expense.
*Cameron - in the best traditions of propagandists everywhere - quickly replaced the 'standard' card on his and made sure the Tory press made something of the juxtaposition
* The current leaders of Scotland, Wales, NI and other worthies are too stupid to A) have their own substitution cards ready, or B) Anticipate Cameron's action
* Cameron and his spin doctors (physicians - heal thyselves) are too stupid to realise the wreaths would hand around after the service for other press/activists/seekers of the truth to check back on
* The whole story is a construct or LIE which won't receive the coverage (of the undoing) in tomorrow's papers that it received (as a lie) in today's
* Ergo, the bulk of the readers of today's papers will remember Ed Milliband for being 'a bit wet' and never associate Cameron with being linked to lying, spinning propagandist fuckery!

Here's a parting thought...the Jews fought bravely in the trenches for their country; Germany, we know what happened to them, and now they deliver death and destruction on Gaza as if it was the Warsaw ghetto...they learned nothing, except how to be the paranoid bully.

Later - 5/8/14 - It was actually the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising last week, the reason it seems to have passed with minimum coverage is simply that none of the protagonists at the time want to talk about it right now. The Russians don't want to talk about their disgusting pause, while the Wehrmacht mopped-up (particularly with the ongoing matters referred-to above still in the news). The Germans like to not be reminded of the whole sorry mess for obvious reasons. The Jews certainly don't want the myriad parallels with Gaza (and The West Bank, Jerusalem illegal settlements and 1947) pointed out (occupied, ghettoised, embargoed, resisted - with tunnels, home-made weapons and armed 'terrorists' - and finally; crushed). While the Hosts - the Poles, don't want reminding of their role in staffing Einsatzgruppen, registering, listing and transporting of their Jews and so on (something the French don't like to talk about either!).

Don't commemorate, celebrate or remember...learn.

G is for Gold Gargants and Great-'kin-shields

Possibly the worst version of Deetail knights came Blasting out of Britains' Hong Kong factory in 1986 (while I was off being a grown-up!...I totally missed these at the time), the Shield Knights, also known as the 'Gold' knights or 'Golden Shield' knights even though there was no gold involved with the shield or the shield-designs!

Chunky lumps of fully-armoured beefcake, or at least the foot figures were...

...and none chunkier than this chap, clearly on illegal anabolic steroids, the worn examples show that the underlying PVC could be a creamy white or flesh-pink. The shields were ridiculously large and they all had a plug-in black plastic sword hanging at the belt along with whichever of the standard weapons they had in their ring-hands.

The right-hand figure in these line-ups are the latter ones who get black helmets and 'panzer' grey mail highlights. They also lost the additional belt-hung sword.

The right-hand line-up is about the best figure of the six as far as anatomy goes and he had a nicely dynamic pose, based on one of the older silver knights.

Two more poses, again the latter issues to the right in each frame, both poses are also chunker-monks! The orange split-crested guy looks like he's wearing a nappy of some kind (early version) or cycling shorts (late version) - unknown member of the Village People?

The final pose and a shot of the various shield designs, the shields were poorly finished polyethylene mouldings. The lower image shows what the shield designs would look like if they missed the colour phase of the printing process, as the six were probably on one sheet, the others are likely to be out there waiting to be found with the blue artwork only?

Mounted figures - the majority were based on the pop-together figures (which will appear above in a day or two!), although some were based on the standard silver knights. The horses caparison got a little slit to take the lance/standard, and the earlier versions of the figures were adapted to take the giant shields and the waist sword.

Horses were limited to black or white and the standards (or pennants...or whatever!) followed the designs of the shields, but you didn't necessarily get two matching with each figure. Also - as the group shot shows - the pallet was limited for caparison colours as well.

Mercifully these had disappeared by the end the 1980's. I know - they're only toys...but these are rather tacky toys! Still it helps you to understand that not all the reasons for a company's demise can be put down to demographics or changing taste...sometimes low sales are a result of not following descent tastes!

B is for Bulgaria

Just a quick one today...these were purchase of the day at the Plastic Warrior show in May, although I didn't have to hunt them out as Peter Evans (PW's roving reporter) brought them to my very hands! Thank you Peter!

He was informed that they were Bulgarian, and there's definitely something 'eastern' about them, although, they are quite unique so may be from Hungary or Romania? The ties between Bulgaria and Russia were much closer than some of the other Comecon countries, and their production tends to mirror Soviet stuff, with twin factories in both nations, mould-share and mould-copy.

28-30mm, swoppet-style, Napoleonic era or (ceremonial?) troops, one with plug-in weapon, the weapon has detail on one side only, almost as if it's stamped-out of a sheet, yet the detail on the sculpted side is clearly injection moulded. I have tried to track down some more to no avail, but will soon have a spy in Sophia looking out for them!

Bases for the foot figures also have yet to be tracked down, but the horse has an integral base and ends up looking very much like (and is the same size as...) Spencer Smith, who - of course - had integral riders! There's still so much out there to be discovered...

S is for Swivel Like Swoppet!

One of the final innovations in the Deetail range, these are quite good fun, four points of articulation with rigid legs meant you could get them into some awkward poses, like an Action Man (GI Joe) with lose elastics, but they can also be posed with the minimum of thought into very realistic fighting positions.

Called Champion Knights, they appeared in 1993 and ran until about '98, alongside various late production of the older ranges and the short-lived Robin Hood set. Currently still around on feeBay and the like, they were never as numerous as the silver knights or Turks, and it's worth sourcing a good sample and laying it away like fine wine!

A general shot or two to give a feel for the figures, in a massed mêlée they do look rather good, although the simplistic shields were a total let-down!

There were four torsos, each available for the longer time in two (reversed) paint schemes, gold on silver or vis-versa. See last frame below for the coloured versions.

I never did a shot of the helmets (but another shoot was pending once the book took shape), so I'm not sure how many mouldings there are, but it looks like six heads were available?

Four leg mouldings were attached to the torsos, these only had the one style of decoration, gold highlights on silver.
The running with foot on tuft of grass was a rather clumsy throwback to the days of lead horses!

Six designs of plug-in crest (3 feather-plumes, 3 'designs') were randomly glued into a hole in the helmets and given various paintings, with Friday-afternoon and Monday-morning figures added to out-workers differing treatments of the paint, there are a fair few variations to track-down, and these are just a taster.

The highlight of this range has to be the weapons, I really like them, particularly the battle-hammer. It's a pity the people who make replacements from time to time don't copy these instead of the dirt-common ones that ran from the 1970's through to the 2000's

The disappointing shields, only half of them pay any attention to the rules of heraldry, and even then not terribly convincingly...this is what happens when you leave the fine details to your Chinese manufacturer, instead of holding on to the design-reigns!

The mounted figures were not only all-new mouldings, but they got an all-new horses and a new design of base, although the old bases were used as well, whether this was early in the run or at the end I don't know.

Colour variations - although there were only the two horse poses, the variation in decoration meant they still looked good together, or even in numbers.

Right at the end they got a 'simplified' paint scheme of coloured surcoats, with grey detailing on what had been the armour plates, mail neck-protection etc...

Because this was such a short-lived series, the final boxes often had both types in at the same time. The helmet crests also become single colour every time.

News, Views Etc...Robin Hood Update and Other Bits...

Robin Hood Update

I've added the images needed to the Robin Hood post; Here

As they were part of another of the cancelled book projects, there will be more Deetail Knight stuff appearing in the next few days, it's mostly an exercise in box-ticking as it's not rare, but strangely the more modern (and less rare) stuff always gets the most hits!


Other Bits

The usual round-up of cultural and other toy soldier related links from around the web. Starting with more Prieser (or - these days - possibly Noch?) figures as extras in artworks;

Kendal Murray

Then nut-cracker soldier Washi Tape...whatever that is [Stickers!];

A Cherry on Top

Some exquisite Architectural Modelling from Tom Eichenberger and a deliverable SEAL-team from Dominator Fireworks - how cool is that? There are other similar 'cakes' out there...


If you find odd placements of toy soldiers, or the toy soldier theme out there on the Wibbly Wobbly Way, let me know and I'll share it with the wider readership.

T is for Trojan Trooper with Tennis Ball

In the Plastic Warrior special on Trojan there is was one item still waiting for a positive ID; the 'Red Devil Paratrooper...

...it's been ID'd!

Although I don't buy much on evilBay (the odd bag of naptha moth balls when I see them!), I do keep an eye on it for research purposes! The other day I spotted this, it had a high BIN price (£45), three watchers and a failed offer.

I thought "Wow, better download the images before they disappear!", but then spent a couple of days thinking I was ignoring the number one rule; if you don't get it when you see it you'll regret it.

As I have saved about forty-quid giving-up smoking in the last three weeks I decided that if it was still on-line the following morning, I'd buy it; it was, I did...

So, here is the elusive chap, not mint but in bloody good condition for something last listed in a 1960 catalogue (to PW's knowledge), so it's older than me and I'm not exactly in prime condition myself!! I dare say they will start to come out of the woodwork now, it often happens that once something has appeared once it turns up again, a few more times in the next few months.

A typical rack toy or pocket-money item, it makes you wonder why people like Britains didn't do more of this kind of thing, Timpo did, and it's an easy money-spinner.

By coincidence, Adrian (Mercator Trading) had let me have this 'unknown' figure about a year ago and he's been sitting in the paratrooper box (it's a side collection) for some time, we both knew it was a 'cut above' but suspected Italy (which seems to have produced a lot of these paratroop toys) or Japan (it's a blow-moulding, with the looks of an over-fed Japanese super-hero character).

Like all the khaki infantry, there are paint variations; one has the boots painted, the other doesn't, one has green goggles, the other silver, one has the quick release buckle silvered, the other doesn't, and there is a marked colour difference in the plastic, so there must have been a fair few made in more than one batch.

He seems to be a 'Red Devil' not because of any association with the German's nickname for British paratroopers in World War II, or the eponymous display team, but because he is a devil...check-out the hat/head? I love the suggestion you should wrap him round a tennis ball for maximum height...not something I remember any other paratroop toys advocating when I was a kid.

I took the figure straight round to Paul Morehead's, so he could photograph him for the next edition of the 'special', and we had a bit of a chat about Trojan, some of the points from which I'll dwell-on quickly. Quite apart from the known, suspected or unknown relationships between Trojan and the rest of that cluster of small, 'early', British plastics makers round London (Kentoys, Speedwell, UNA and VP), there is also first; the fact that Trojan was possibly only one of three 'names' coming from this house, the other two being W. Shipton 9earlier) and - probably - AJ Novelties, with secondly; additional brands being Lilliput (typewriters) and Tiny Trojan. So while their works may have been small; a mews stable in North West London among others, they were clearly quite prolific for a short period.

This figure may well have been from the AJ Novelties branch, although in Trojan packaging, as they were marketing "A wonderful range of tea sets and plastic novelties" which sounds like the sort of unit likely to have an ethylene blow-moulder? Equally they could have been bought-in, even from Italy or Japan!

When I bought the 'mother load' back in October 2010 (which got me 'into' large scale, and early British), from the Priddy's, Bill told me that his uncle and him had actually been to the factory in the Granville Mews...one of the things he was adamant they had seen there was a 'large vat of liquid' in the middle of the stable.

Now - I said it couldn't be plastic, that's not how it's handled - he thought it was, but couldn't remember much else, just that there was this vat of 'stuff' being dipped into. If Shipton's model aeroplanes had die-cast or lead/white-metal parts, or if the Lilliput typewriters had alloy parts, this may explain the vat, as they are all (relatively) low-temperature melting metals?

It may - equally - be that one of these names/brands is also responsible for some of the otherwise unidentified hollow-cast figures kicking-around in the late 1950's or '60's, and that the vat was for producing such figures?

So, there is still a lot to discover about these companies, their relationships and wider ranges, however, we now know what the Red Devil looks like.

M is for McMystery Figures

Back in 2009 a member of the Treefrog toy soldier forum asked the assembled experts if they could identify his Mystery Figures, sadly, the experts were all off for the day (I'm joking!)...and it's taken me a while to track down the images I took in 2007 of an eBay lot I'd just bought.

If someone on that forum could direct the chap to this post, his query can be answered...to an extent!

They are made by a company called Highlander, not - as one might expect - from Scotland, but Boca Raton, Florida! How a swamp came to be associated with the crags of Caledonia is anyone's guess....I know, I know...I've got Google...it's the beach!

I'm guessing this was a short-lived venture, probably launched off the back of the 1968 movie 'The Green Berets', short-lived because A) they don't appear often on feeBay and B) the popularism of the Vietnam war would soon become the silence of the war that dare not speak its name, and selling any war toys, let alone specifically Vietnam War related became an uphill task! Probably issued in 1972 as US troop numbers in-theatre were already being reduced, the pull-out being completed in '73, these would have been a heavy-sell.

A 3-page commercial catalogue (Build Profits While Your Customers 'Build Battlefields' with Highlander) was published in 1978, and later sets were issued unpainted, unassembled and - judging by one recent feeBay listing - missing the MG! they do appear on feeBay regularly, usually with ridiculous BIN's. Look out for the A/T gun released without figures as code; HT-105 and the 2-man MG team as HT-106 (painted or unpainted).

I'm not sure how many Pak. 40 75mm Anti-Tank guns the US special forces employed in Vietnam, but my guess is none! However, toys is toys, and this is not a bad little model of one. Of far more interest are the approximately 40mm figures, some painted as African-Americans and all wearing the green beret.

I don't know how many poses there were in total, or whether there were ever any North Vietnamese 'enemy'? The cards apparently cost 25C back in the day and both the vehicles and figures are in a hard styrene plastic - another reason for their rarity?

I had an SPG as well, also carded but it had no figures included and I gave it to Paul for PW, but he seems to have misplaced it - one of the reasons I've held-off on blogging them was the hope of a photograph of it! It was - if I recall correctly - one of that 1950's family of M53, 54, 55 vehicles, but I can't remember which one and didn't think to photograph it at the time; I'd only had a digital camera for a few weeks (these start at photo number 148, from zero). Another reason for the delay, as I'd yet to suss-out the 'tulip = macro' rule and was hoping to get them out of storage and re-shoot them better...one day I might!

There is very little about these on the 'net', and a bit of research from someone in Florida might reap a list of products, or a better company history? There is a Highland Toys in Scotland....they make stuffed animals!

News, Views etc...Posting Elsewhere! (rant alert)

I know my posting rate has dropped-off this year, but with real life stuff and the fact that I'm running out of stuff in the attic to blog, while everything else is still in storage have both affected what I can post, but there will be a steady'ish trickle of new'ish stuff...

This week I was also posting on another site - the STS Animal Collectors Forum;

Airfix

 JK of Hong Kong

 Tudor Rose

If you collect things other than military figures I would recommend it, they are a friendly bunch without the out-and-out competitiveness or bitchiness you get on some forums. And they have an animal-wiki attached;

Toy Animal Info.



I've also been posting original content elsewhere without my knowledge or permission....



This little shit;

Jimdo

...has copied all the documentation and most of the other images from my two EKO articles, presumably this means he doesn't mind me taking his stuff and putting it up here in English? As he seem to have stolen a lot of stuff from other people/books, I shall refrain!



While this plagiarist thief;

 Ghislain Oubreyrie

...has taken the diver images from the Kellogg's post and carefully cut round them! He's also cut round the Toysmith divers regularly found on eBay and is passing them off as Kellogg's originals, but the Toysmith ones have aluminium alloy plugs while the originals were tin, which tended to rust. Again, the little-dick has lots of useful stuff I could take reciprocally and post here in the universal language - if I chose to?



All you thieving pirates (Henk, Rudik, Ward as well) need to understand one thing...if/when I can afford it I will engage legal representation in your own countries and sue you (or your web-service provider/publisher/printer) for the price of a small house!

I publish original content, OR I credit fully with permission/link-backs, OR I flag up dodgy origin with a caveat, I also understand the law of copyright both off and on the internet. You don't; you're all inadequate, poxy little neuro-typical, farty-arsed fuckwits relying on others to do your 'work' for you.


So....lots of 'Smallscaleworld' on the web, just not all of it published here in the last few days, and not all of it original!

S is for Sultan Saladin of Syria's Saracen Subjects

Repeat three times quickly whilst eating a water-biscuit!

Bit of a box-ticker today; not rare, not uncommon, but they have had a fair few decoration variations over the years so I thought we could look at some of them...the Deetail Turks/Saracens.

The one I always assumed was supposed to be Saladin / Salad-in / Sala'hadin....[Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (Righteousness of the Faith, Joseph, Son of Job)] with his wicked curved scimitar lunging at the effete King Richard! "Drink my coffee with milk will you, you apostate Euro-swine!"

Chain-mace guy, some of the poses suit more than one of the weapons Britains provided, but this guy always looks best about to separate a crusaders head from his shoulders with a spiked boulder on a loo-chain!

Lance-throwing guy, his helmet has always suffered from the notorious 'easily detachable crescent-moon shaped crest syndrome'!

Other spear/lance guy...he's the guy with the other spear/lance.

Can have most weapons guy. I prefer the late painting on most of these figures, and his last version (a few years ago now 2007'ish) was particularly pleasing on the eye.

I'll take any weapon I'm given as well guy, but the axe works best! Illustrates the development of the base style well, in all the line-ups I've tried to go oldest to the left, newest to the right.

That's it; tags added, box ticked! Definite thanks to Mike Melnyk for some of the figures.