T is for Tiberian Troops from Toyway

Bit of a cheat post, or even 'cheap' post, as I spent so much time on the Halloween stuff, I left myself with nothing for today, and no time to post it - if it had been ready - so quickly shot these, but they sort of ran-out of background and as I was being lazy, instead of setting-up a better 'set', I just shot them at a steeper angle - and definitely a box ticker!

Three lightly-armed auxiliary types, their grannies have knitted them lovely surcoats from brown wool, look; an open chain stitch; you could use them as mail shirts in a movie! Joking apart; it's nice to see the mail a bit rusty looking, as I'm sure it got so, after a few weeks on campaign, especially in the cold, wet, Northern 'provinces'.

Three 'proper' empire-era legionnaires with the lorica-segmata (or whatever the spelling is), overlapping plate armour, the only three in the set and looking like a reconnaissance patrol rather than a well drilled maniple.

Four more of the lightly-armed troops make-up the ten figures of these Toyway sets, these all given a helmet and shield, but nothing else bar a baldric to hang their sword's scabbards' from - the centurion and the archer have both drawn a belt from the QM's stores though!

All of them, from the rear, although mostly rather casual (all the sibling sets are the same) and lightly armed they are nice figures and I like them, they are also quite well-painted for china-troops.

The one oddity with all these sets from Toyway, is the separate base with its small 'CHINA' in the hollowed-out underside, where a single mounting spigot is set very near the edge of the quite-wide disc, most figures having a choice of two holes (some only have one) they all end-up 'standing back' on their little piece of universe - the kneeling guy and the standing on a rock guy being the two exceptions; they are also the poses with only one hole!

News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Events

Easing off now as we get closer to Christmas, but still some good shows out there, and more to come (Sandown next week!), so see if there's one near you and 'fill your boots' with plunder - THAT'S why pirates have baggy boots!

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Shows

Saturday 3rd November 2018

Beconsfield - Toy & Train Fairs

Beconsfield School, Wattleton Road, Buckinghamshire, HP9 1SJ

Tel. - 02082 051 518 (Peter Levinson or Diane)

10:30 - 14:30

Crawley - SRP Toyfairs

The Hawth Theatre, Hewth Avenue, Crawley, Sussex, RH10 6YZ

Web. - http://srptoyfairs1.co.uk/

eMail: srptoys1@hotmail.co.uk

Tel. - 07739 998 012 (Paula or Gerry)

10:00 - 14:00hrs

Ludlow - Tony Oaks Toy Fairs - Ludlow Toy & Train Collector's Fair

Ludlow Racecourse, Bromfield, Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 2BT

Tel. - 01270 652 773

Mob. - 07825 631 323

10:30 - 14:00hrs

Admission £2

Free parking

Oxford - Richard Atkins Fairs

Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1AB

Tel. - 01869 347 489

10:30 - 15:00hrs

Wrexham - Barry Stockton Fairs - Hobbies & Model Rail Show

Wrexham Memorial Hall, Bodhyfryd, Wrexham, LL12 7AG

Web. - http://barrystocktonfairs.co.uk/
Tel. - 01513 343 362
10:30 - 15:30
Admission - Adult £3.50, children £1.00

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Sunday 4th November 2018

Bolton - Barry Potter / BP Fairs - 'Macron'

The Premier Suite, Macron Stadium, Bolton, Lancashire, BL6 6SF

Web. - www.bpfairs.com

Tel. - 01604 846 688

Mob. - 07966 527 177

Admission £3.50 (early-bird £7), OAP's £3, Children £1

Free parking

Exeter 'Westpoint' - Bulldog Fairs

Westpoint Arena, Clyst St. Mary, Exeter, EX5 1DJ

Web. - www.bulldogfairs.com

eMail - bulldogfairs@aol.com

Tel. - 01373 452 857

Mob. - 07917 125 641

10:30 - 14:30hrs

Admission £4, each under-16 free with adult, 'Early Bird' £10 from 08:30hrs

Falkirk, Scotland - McLaren Models

Tel. - 01324 624 102

(All other details here)

Note - Gerry at SRP Fairs has cancelled the Herne Bay show previously pencilled-in for Sunday.

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Auctions

Tuesday 6th November 2018

Newbury - Special Auction Services (SAS)

81 Greenham Business Park, Newbury, West Berkshire, RG19 6HW

Web: www.specialauctionservices.com

eMail: mail@specialauctionservices.com

Tel: 01635 580595

Fax: 0871 714 6905

Antiques, fine art and militaria

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Tuesday 6th / Wednesday 7th November 2018

Stockton-on-Tees - Vectis

Fleck Way, Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees, TS17 9JZ
Web. - www.vectis.co.uk
eMail - admin@vectis.co.uk
01642 750 616

'Specialist Sale' both days - subject unknown

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If you are an event promoter/show curator/auctioneer and you want your toy, model, collectable or popular-/youth-culture type sale/exhibition/event listed here - FOR FREE - or linked to; please eMail me -

maverickatlarge[at]hotmail[dot]com

- stating the date/s of the event, address of event, contact details, opening/viewing times, admission pricing and any other relevant facts/details or features - parking, travel notes, disability access, availability of refreshments, event subject matter &etc.

And please mention any flyer-art or poster-/leaflet-scans but send by separate eMail, in case they go to the 'junk' folder, from where they can be recovered and marked safe, but only if I know they're there!

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Thanks to Bob De Silva for pointing out that the Vintage 20mm site link was no longer working, but the time you read this I should be fixing it!

2 minutes later . . . Done;

http://vintagewargamingfigures.info/rblack/index.html

News, Views Etc . . . Yoga Joes +

Remember those shlefies Brian sent the blog a year or so ago, well, they have a Blog of their own, I would get some but they aren't cheap and they're not doing much, however . . . everthing you need to know or (see) about Yoga Joes here;

https://www.yogajoes.com/

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It's only seven-odd weeks away!

https://folksy.com/items/7195927

Q is for Quintet of Qhaki Qombat Qontributions

As a follow-up to the earlier post . . . 

We did look at my 1st version [very] small sample a while ago, to which I have added a few bits, but not enough for a return; however Theo van der Weerden sent this to the blog , these are late issue, intermediate type (no separate boots) with the same bases as the final types (previous post) and you can see both the rival Timpo DNA in the webbing and the helmet carried-over almost the same to the last version British troops in the previous post.

When they come with these blue-grey helmets I suspect they are trying to be more UN infantry, so I've left that in the Tag list from the earlier post, but I've added 60mm, as some of these chaps are heading that way. Also note that they get an LMG/Bren instead of the GPMG and their rifles appear to be 'up-and-under' shotguns! Cheers Theo!

D is for Does Anybody Not Know What These Are!

If you follow Plastic Warrior magazine (subscribe!) you probably remember the excellent series of articles on theses written by Matt Thier a few years ago and recognised the figures straight away, if you are in your fifties and remember 1970's toy soldier production, you'll clock these instantly and if your shtick is British production you won't need me giving you an ID on the following.

But . . . if you get excited to the point of hysterical public orgasm by 1950's Spanish rubber while suffering 'knowledge-base' brain-freezes on endless samples of more recent stuff . . . well, luckily for the other readers; this isn't your Blog!

Late production Cherilea swoppets, the third generation, in their British Infantry guise with a clear nod to Timpo's figures and a vast improvement on the previous two generations, although; I prefer the toy-like charm of the earlier attempts while getting annoyed by the idiosyncrasies of this set!

The Brit's though are probably the best as their helmet with its two-colour flecked or marbled scrim-net cover is the best of these figures, and the weaopns are half-decent with the SLR, GPMG and SMG quite well modelled, the other two are a bit 'off-the-wall' though!

The 'Germans'! Grey and black . . . it's all a bit jingoistic now, but back in the day it was the acceptable way of doing these things, as the Germans have never gone to war is this shade of grey and didn't use the illustrated weapons; the anachronisms are what make them 'toy' soldiers!

At least the piss-pot with a cut-out on the rim works reasonable well for the WWII era 'Fritz' helmet.

I think these are meant to be US 'Doughboys' in an olive drab but as you can see the helmets don't work at all with them and you think they're half finished in some way, and of course these were in the shops year before the US armed-forces starting experimenting with the current 'Fritzie'!

They don't work any better for the UN troops, but at least the Soviet-looking RPG/A-T rocket-launcher is more explainable with a generic army of unknown origins than it was at the top of the page in a UKMF/BAOR rifle-company!

The weapons; top-left to bottom-right we have an FN/SLR, an RPG7 type (or even a half-decent stab at a PzF 44), a FN MAG/GPMG, Stirling SMG and a sort of Ingram/Uzi type 9mm automatic 'sprayer'. The GPMG is a tad oversized but quite recognisable, and for some time now (1995) a US service weapon too, where it's called an M240B, replaceing the M60.

Same torso, different legs! There are five leg poses and five weapon-specific torsos, although the nine-milli' body can carry most of the other weapons as with the far-left figure in the German shot above.

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Creepy Critters

While last year I found quite a few new bags of stuff, if only ephemeral semi-flat shite; leading to several insect/vermin posts running up to Halloween and another couple on the day, this year there's been very little, Waitrose had the same set as last year and I think Wilkinson's did at one point earlier in the short season, probably old stock as it quickly cleared.

But otherwise - apart from the snake and crackers (the Hunted House was a while ago) - there was nothing to find of the varmint or horror-figure variety, so thanks to Peter Evans and Brian Berke for more than half the stuff in the preceding nine posts, but I did manage to find these less than a week ago, in Poundland Basingrad, to finish this year's Halloween posts.

Creepy Critters - I think we saw something similar last year, but I'm pretty sure the contents are new, and ten posts is a nice round number!

Six items for a quid, you can't knock it, although I hadn't noticed my cockroach is missing his front legs to a short-shot mould problem, I should have looked for a better one and it's probably too late now, however in this price range, the whole batch was probably the same!

The bat has a deep hole which may be a mould-release pin mark but I suspect is also used for threading elastic in/for other, different contracts, I picked up a generic spider the other day with a similar hole.

And now on Small Scale World: today's lesson in Biology for GCSE - how a snake works!

To paraphrase Mrs. Tweedy of Tweedy's Farm "Rowd'unts goo'win . . . poo cooms'owt"!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Army

The only thing to fight a mummy army is a skeleton army, so lucky for us Brian managed to find one of them too, and if I understood him correctly he had to keep looking in Dollar General for them and only managed to find both sets the other day, so many thanks to him.

Also from Dolgencorp LLC, these were also issued last year with an orange card and in the UK under the PMS brand by 99p Stores and we have seen them before, but new packaging means new post! Only eight poses, so you get two duplicates but luckily they have used 'trooper' poses rather than the horn-guy, maybe another 'Hell's Angel' would have been nice?.

Over here they were only eight, while last year's offering from the 'States was also 10 and it was the same two poses duplicated. I also rather like that the horn-player seems to be using a giant-catapult's bolt as a personal weapon.

Another look at the figures, this year's batch are slightly lighter-sand in plastic colour, but I haven't noticed any other differences, and like the mummys are a bog-standard ethylene polymer, a bit more rigid than Airfix's formula, and the same as last year's issue.

Playing! We've had this image once today already (or a near identical one from the same sequence), so I've launched these guys strait out of hell in a technicolour nightmare with the heat-map button in Picasa!

See! The snake is 'main man' in a skeleton army, although I'm not sure if you would apply AFV rules or siege-engine rules? As it's 'sword & sandal', I guess siege-engine rules would be the more applicable until play revealed limitations and someone sat down to write-out proper rules for 'giant undead zombie snake skeletons'! That head, used as a bettering-ram, would make short-work of the main-gates at Troy . . . just saying! Stuff yer' wooden 'orse and get a bone snake!

Many-thanks again Brian!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Mummy Army

Imported by Dolgencorp for Dollar General stores in the 'States and sent to the Blog by our friend in New York, Mr B, just in time for Halloween, not that I was expecting them at all, but I had seen them on Shaun's Blog a while ago and was hoping they'd appear over here somewhere, but they didn't or haven't, or not so I know it!

These are good value with 10 figures in 10 poses, all new and while I'd agree with everything Shaun said a while ago aboutthe sculpts I'd add that while there is [also] an obvious lack of ribs, the real reason they look so skinny or cartoonish is the lack of hip-bones under the bandages, but that's more to do with the skeleton models we've got used to in the Toy Soldier collecting world; the real mummy's - when they are found - are very skinny!

Strangely: the pen & ink artwork on the rear of the card shows fatter chaps!

All ten, both sides, cool as a burial chamber! Two unarmed, two swordsmen, two axmen, two apprentice Death's with their scythes and a couple of ex-ninja's equipped with fighting-sticks, one of which looks to be a giraffe's shin-bone!

I quite like the two unarmed ones, while the one is trying really hard to scare Scooby-doo by waving his arms around and murmuring "whoo-hoo", the other is stood there, going "Hank, dude . . . really . . . it's not working . . . "

Close-ups of the 'scarer' pose and the base mark, these are a standard polyethylene type with enough flexibility to take rough play, but relatively un-glue'able. The 'pipe-cleaner' legs are probably another factor in their cartoonishness!

I gave the 'armed reconnaissance troop' a scorpion light MAFV (multiple-armed fighting varmint) for 'fire-support' from the pending insects/regular return post!

While below them a quick comparison with one of last year's Previews Exclusive Nazi zombies and one of this years SCS Direct zombies, you can see they are all pretty much of a muchness height-wise, and paint would bring them all together, better. The SCS are a bit chunky and the Nazi has more or finer, etched surface detailing.

Cheer's Brian, perfect timing!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Pirate - Large

The resin pile continues to climb skyward, the second time I've said that in three days, but what a nice piece of resin; this was a very expected Ashland 'Tiny Treasures' surprise in the parcel Brian Berke recently sent to the Blog, and it's great.

He has a [really quite vicious] real steel hook, whether it's part of a whole armature (unlikely) or an embed at the wrist (more likely) I can't tell, and he is posed in a manner best described as pretty louché!

There's not much you can do with a single figure to build or enhance a Blog-post, but I wanted to stretch it to ten-posts once the dearth of Halloween stuff tuned suddenly to a flood, so here he is, for scaling, with the berserker - not for the first time in recent weeks - picking on someone who doesn't care and isn't troubled!

I enhanced the colour on this picture, and raised the light levels to banish shadows and as a result the strawberries have all 'gone critical' and are about to blow!

You can see he's the same size as the bear/diver (diver-bear!), which means he's a good match for this chap's crew as well, like I say; the resin pile's growing - Many thanks Brian!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Snake, Snake Skeleton!

When I first saw this I almost ignored it among all the other tat that gets piled-up for the three or four weeks of the short Halloween selling season, but then I though "Well, actually it's almost perfect for Games Workshop's skeleton warriors, or any other undead forces for that matter? So quite useful"

It wasn't a lot; maybe £1.50, something like that? Currently at Wilkinsons (Wilco - until the end of today at least) and might be on a clearance-sale between tomorrow and the weekend; if you're lucky?

Obviously a simple moulding (it's one piece with four sprayed, matt-black, stencilled blobs) and representing a quite short, fat snake, it's hardly going to scare anyone but could have its uses, not least as a cheap film prop!

'Crazy Bones' by Seasons, never seen or heard of the latter and suggests a range of the former, have you seen other Crazy Bones?

Tried it with both this morning's new addition and an old sculpt from the 90's, and both ride it quite well. Are you a gamer fielding a skeleton army, are you thinking 'Hell, that's what I need - right there!', or could it have a use even/just as a piece of scenery or terrain/obstacle.

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Halloween Crackers?

I'm not sure if I should be castigating these as the devil-spawned, tradition trashing, obvious and overdue  move of some capitalist Mo-fo intent on destroying the world to push his profit margin up naught-point-five percent, or celebrate the fact that while most of the world still don't have Christmas Crackers we can now have them twice a year . . . Neah-neah Na-naeh-neah!

I'll play it safe and try to please both camps of thought . . .

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Post One

Oh-Em-Gee!! Can you believe these?!! Some pocket-lining, money-grubbing city-type, with more money than sense already, has done a number crunching exercise and decided to run a coach and horses through the lovely old tradition of Christmas crackers, by associating them with the horrors of pre-Christian barbarism, old-wives tales and the South American day of the Dead!!

For a few points on the top-end, the bottom line is now there's something else for hard-pressed, austerity poor parents to be badgered for by their kids, innocent of the strain on the family budget as their little eye light-up at the thought of a gift, snap and motto. There should be consumer laws protecting society from this kind of blasphemous corporate hegemony and I can't understand why the Daily Wail hasn't taken a stand!

I mean it's right there before your eyes in black & orange, you can't miss it, how could you fail to be outraged?!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Post Two

How cool are these, Christmas crackers . . . at Halloween! Too cool for party-school I dare say and full of old favourites! The card (on the left) and my sample (on the right) differ only in the body of the insect and the species of semi-flat animal!

Both the spider and the octopus have been seen in a set of mouldings which have been around since the 1970's, while we saw chrome-coated versions of the beetles last time we had an insect round-up and I recently saw several of them on a kids magazine so another ubiquitous novelty doing the rounds.

It seems each set of six has two tricks/dressing-up accessories, two games and two toy figurines. Top idea, I hope the Daily Pail gets right behind this modern thinking, to bring colourful, affordable novelties to the suddenly brightened-homes of austerity Britain!

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

I'm not sure; I think it's a bit naff, but I got two [proto-] posts out of it . . . and some stuff for the collection, but at four-quid; not something I'll repeat!

Although note that the person dotting the eyes of the beetle (with a permanent marker) was drunk when they did mine! And as with some of the claims made for the creepy-crawly sets from all sources last year - nothing hair-raising or creepy about them!

Time will tell if it takes-off and I know - hyperbole apart - that you have always been able to get crackers for other occasions from specialist suppliers or party-planners, such as for weddings or birthdays, so why not Halloween, but it begs the question, how long before some corporate back-handed junket-taking columnist tells us in his or her erudite fashion that funeral crackers are "Just de rigueur at wakes these days"! Remember; this is Waitrose, not Poundland!

Apart from the two variables noted above, I think it's a standard content-mix as the jokes are numbered 1 - 6 . . .

1 - What is a mummy's favourite type of music? Wrap

2 - Why do demons and ghouls hang out together? Because demons are a ghoul's best friend

3 - What do you call a witch who lives at the beach? A Sand-witch

4 - Why didn't the skeleton dance at the party? He had no body to dance with

5 - What happens when the ghost gets lost in the fog? He is mist

6 - What are ghosts' favourite kind of streets? Dead ends

. . . while the paper crowns are - of course - pumpkin orange!

A is for All Hallows' Eve - Skeleton Pirates - Small

These Blue Box are a bit of a mystery too, only because while I keep a good track of everything that comes-in, I seem to have completely lost track of these! I can't find them in any 'how they come in' shots published or not, but I don't remember them coming from a charity shop either, so while they may have been in the ex-storage stash, or a Sandown purchase which escaped the radar; if you recognise them as being from you, let me know for a full acknowledgement and thanks!

If they did come out of the 'storage sorts' the other week, they pre-date the issuing dates given elsewhere, by a certain self-abusing monkey-lizard, by some years, as they would have to be from 2010 or 2011 at the latest?

Skeletons that are pirates, pirate-skeletons . . . which day to post them, are they firstly pirates and skeletons second, or primarily skeletons with a secondary pirate theme? It's not all having toy-fun, or baiting TJF here at Small Scale World Towers, some heavy editorial decision-making has to be undertaken on an almost daily, weekly, monthly . . . regularly occasional basis!

They came with five similar - but fully-fleshed - pirates, in blue,  I may (must?) have somewhere else! Bases only have a generic 'CHINA' mark.

Comparison shot with some of the similar figures out there, the 1980/90's Egyptian skeleton sculpts are a little bigger than the others, but nothing paint won't hide! Sculpting style is quite like both Jaru's pirates and their version of the Egyptian skeletons?