C is for Corsican Corsair . . . from Corsica!

A love story! Every International Talk Like a Pirate Day needs a love story and this is one!

I've known my friend Louise for 36 years, on-and-off, and she's like a big sister, far away, but I always look her-up when I visit the Channel Islands and we have a good giggle and catch-up on stuff, as you do! I suspect she's like a big-sister to hundreds - if not thousands - of islanders and off-islanders who have found her shop over the decades, and hung around for a chat!

I also knew her late partner Colin, he would occasionally rib me on my Dad, but without malice, Colin was someone who 'lived' life . . . to the full, and didn't have time for malice! I in turn would rib him on his Aurignac Liquer! [hope I've spelt that right!]

Well it happens that a few years ago, and not long before illness caught-up with him, Colin suggested to Louise that they go on a back-packing trip round Europe. Now, a gentleman never asks a lady her age, but suffice to say I'm in my mid-fifties and they had a year or two over me! But off they went, like a couple of teenagers! I don't know the entire itinerary, but I know they did France and the Mediterranean . . . at some point winding-up in Corsica.

The little port/village they were staying-in had a shop, outside of which was the below figure, and Louise rather fell for it, suggesting it would be nice to have one outside her little shop, back in Alderney. Colin - being Colin - offered the Corsican shop-keeper some geld for it, which the Corsican turned down . . . well, you would, wouldn't you?

Not to be thwarted, Colin worked on the shop-keeper every-day, for the rest of their stay, and in the end the shop-keeper gave in (if you knew Colin - you would, wouldn't you!), and a deal was done. This left two pedestrians with a life-sized pirate to drag round Europe! "Don't worry love" says Colin (who always had the enthusiasm and confidence of three men); "I'll ask round the harbour, something will come up!"

Well . . . Colin - being Colin - found a lorry driver who was willing to take the statue, and - after some work round Europe - would deliver it to St. Malo, on a given date, and the pair of them continued on their trip, not knowing if they would see - the now - 'their' Corsair, ever again! Louise thought they wouldn't!

A few days (or weeks?) later they were back in St. Malo, waiting to return home, and after some hanging-around and nail-biting . . . the lorry turned up! We can't begin to imagine where the pliant passenger had been, or what he's shared the back of the lorry with . . . fridges, pot-plants, fresh produce, a couple of pallets of die-cast widgets, four tons of leaflets for an International bank, pop-corn makers from Taiwan . . . we'll never know?

Monsieur l'Buccaneer was off-loaded, final payments made, and now our two intrepid travellers were stood on the quay-side in St. Malo with backpacks and a six-foot statue of a Corsican corsair . . . still with sword!

Calls were made, a return was affected by the live persons, and a day or two later a boat from Alderney dropped in to St. Malo on the QT and surreptitiously picked-up a ridged passenger, who was trafficked into the UK, armed, without the correct paper-work and under the noses of the red-coated Revenue Men!

As you can see, he now stands proudly outside Louise's Louise, where he guards the forecourt, being taken-in and put-out daily with a system of ramp-boards (he's not light, and there's quite a step); a permanent reminder of Colin's love for Louise, his eccentricity (which was undeniable!) and their grand trip together.

♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥

At 1:1-scale I'd love it to be the largest plastic figure on Small Scale World, but we had 'giant-lady' from Woking a year or two ago (more to come on her/'them') and she was 2:1! He's obviously fiberglass-reinforced two-part epoxy-resin, is hollow, and has a real leather baldric, steel sword and a wig of 'pirate' braids held in place by a bandana.

He's Colin's Corsican corsair from Corsica . . . Best Poirate Ever! Ahaarrrrh!

Or should that be; l'Ahaarrrrhe!

R is for Reprobate Resin Robber Rascals

Now, I have to confess, I've lost track of some stuff this year, so while I'm sure on bulk of these being from Peter Evans, I'm not so sure on the last pair, they may have been a charity-shop or (from the photograph-dates) a Sandown Park thing, but many thanks to Peter for the bulk of them, if not the lot!

I think we've seen a set of these, which were a Charity shop purchase, years ago (2014) but here's another, sort of channeling Fontanini with a bit of PotC thrown in for good measure . . . and good sales! He's 60mm'ish.

Well . . . no fighting over the plunder here, they all have a stash at their feet! I wonder if they are from a set of 'known characters', not because of the obvious 'Blackbeard' as there are two here alone, but because the woman on the right seems to be based on a famous painting or woodblock of a lady pirate?

There's a more 'chicky-babe' piratess on the left, but as you can see some of them come with two base types, a sandy-beach or a ship's deck-boards, although f you look at the middle chap (another Blackbeard). you can see the pistols are cruder on the beach-version, so he's a copy, or second of two?

How many there are in the whole set and whether or not they all come in two versions is anyone's guess and do the three treasure-chest ones have a deck-version? but it could mean as many as 16 in a full set? 54mm (65 with base).

The two who may have come from somewhere else, slightly more comical, but also more animated, they (like all the above) are around the 70mm mark, and are also with the above, probably aimed at seaside tourist, as keepsakes, although they'd look good in a sandcastle!

F is for Follow-up - Hing Fat Pirates

We looked at these for the second time last year, and I pointed out a difference between the pastel-coloured ones we'd looked at ten years ago and the more primary ones which I further consider to be the true Hing Fat (they tend to copy rather than innovate), so someone else's earlier sculpts.

Well I've picked-up a few more, and these contain two of the figures I only had as the later copies, but from the earlier set, so all the poses will probably turn-up for that earlier set, with Hing Fat probably still missing a few poses?

The new additions also increase the number of colours to be sought-out, and while I won't try for every pose in every colour, I can still use a few more from both sets for fuller samples, so I will look out for them again this year, with a view to a final post in a future ITLAPD.

Although Hing Fat's still current set have a dark red and a mustard, these are all the earlier, better sculpts.

D&D Distribution are offering this version of the Hing Fat set, and you can see the pose number is quite limited, with a hideously over-scale plunder-chest and barrel, two rather daft guns (I have one somewhere, but the wheel-hubs are brittle and one's fallen off! The raft however is not bad for a cheapie rack-toy?

Note also; the plants and horses, the former pretty generic fayre maybe bought-in, maybe Hing Fat sub-piracies, while the two horses are more interesting, being bare-backed sculpts of some originallity? The brown-one looks like the donor for the BraveStarr robo-one?

This was an old thumbnail from feeBay, and I've had to blow-it-up, lighten it and enhance the shadows to get it viewable, but it shows an alternate contents with a canoe replacing the giant barrel!

D&D are also carrying these smaller/different contents sets as header-carded hanging rack-toys, the pirate ship (and cannon) was being ascribed to someone else (Pressman) a while ago (15-odd, 20 years ago?) possibly in O'Brian?

Anyway, obviously in both iterations it has been around for a while and branded to various other names as a generic, all three D&D sets carry their own/branded artwork. Some sets have a 'little jolly boat' instead.

This was a late addition to the post and compares the older, now enhanced set on the left, and those poses duplicated by Hing Fat as smaller second-generation copies on the right. Because I was rushing things I managed to duplicate one pre-HF pose (top right of left-hand image - pink and mint-green), while seven is an odd total, so I'm wondering if another pose for Hing Fat's clone-set may turn-up, while eleven suggests one still to find for the originals?

ITLAPD is for It's That Linguistically Awkward Pronunciation Day!

Arrrharrrrrr! Jimlad! It be that toime-o yearrr when we's been talkin' loik a poirate-true, at least once yerr'understand, or being so moinded as to be toipin' pidgin West-country loik a bardly-drawn carracterrr in a moidley-racist sit'you'ation comedy loik!

Stilll . . . it's bin'a'yearr since the last ITLAPD bowt sailed away forrr to look up a cheast'o plunderr, and it be baak in porrt nows, let's haav'us a ganderr at thee treasurrres to be'old!

Peter Evans has contributed greatly to this year's ITLAPD, and not least with these four who arrived around the 22nd of last September, missing that year's ITLAPD by days! From the left we have a cartoony boy-pirate with telescope, possibly meant as a key-ring he has no hole, so may have been in a kiddies set of some kind?

The next one is quite weird; clearly resembling a carved softwood or balsa pirate of the Mediterranean style, he's actually cast in polyresin, and the weird bit is . . . if you were to take the casting mould from an actual carved-wood figure, you'd never get the mould off the master, as the detail in the wood-grian would fill with casting compound and glue them together like Siamese twins, so the whole 'wood effect' has been faked by a skilled sculptor?

Leaving one with the question . . . why? It would be easier (and cheaper) to source actual balsa figures from some craft community in Turkey, North Africa or the Caribbean, that fake one and use two-part epoxy resins with all the H&S material handling and solvent problems/expences that entails? Very odd, but nevertheless a nice figure!

I feel the third - 35mm - figure should ring some bells, perhaps with Portuguese readers? Is he a mascot or brand-mark for an actual ice-cream firm? I feel the blue-tipped ice-lolly is quite distinctive, no questioning whether he's a key-ring or not and he looks a bit French, Spanish or Portuguese to me?

Finally a Soma shipmate!

These six were from Peter too, 35/40mm and I've credited him in the past (ITLAPD '16) for some, I have also been picking them up in ones and twos, and while three years ago I wondered at 'at least' one more pose, two have turned up, giving us a new total . . .

. . . of 10 poses. I can't recall Peter ever saying, but I suspect capsule toys for the origin, and they are soft rubber, pod-foot copies of the polypropylene, full-based Red Box (HGL here?) 40mm pirates, which we see here as silver and yellow versions on the far right.

Also a product of at least two donations from Peter over four or five years, also some odds and sods from around and about and also last seen here in 2016, the 45mm Dollar General set has grown to eight poses from six, and to four distinct colours from two.

Note how the first two on the left are variations of each other, while the two 'captain' types are almost reverse-sculpts of each-other? And they are larger than the previous lot at 50mm.

This turned-up in the wrong box back in October as I was stuffing everything in the garage before the winter, he's Manurba also supplied to Koho as premiums and around the 50mm mark, semi-flat (demi-rond).

Seen on Revell's stand at this year's Toy fair in January, I saved the shot for ITLAPD when I did the Revell review posts a few weeks ago! The 'Black Pearl' from Pirates of the Caribbean is actually an old (and simple) kit from way back, re-box-arted to tie-in with the held franchise/license. In front of it is a glow-in-the-dark plastic 'ghost' version, which is more traditional to Revell's output.

Pulled from May's PW show reports, Adrian Little ID'd this as soon as I showed it to him as being the Blackgang Chine's pirate from the Isleof Wight, he's factory painted polystyrene, about 45mm and has a silver skull-face for some reason?

Lacking decent resolution, but interesting nevertheless, these are from the recently defect Marshall's wholesale catalogue, and give a clue as to those sets of figural key-rings I got for a quid-a-pop in the new pop-up pound-shop here in Fleet, as they clearly got Marshall's clearance; the cards are the same as the right-hand one here, and you could only afford to sell complete cards for a quid if the unit-price was peanuts!

The originals would have had an RRP of between 50p and £1.50 per ring? Anyway, the skeletons (I think there are three poses but there might be four?) may appear sans key-chains elsewhere, while the skull & crossbones are within theme, if outside the scope of a figure collection!

B is for Best Toy Ever . . . Again!

Some best-toys win on features or playability (the Tri-Ang Battle Game), others win on sheer quality (The Britains Land Rover), but when I awarded the Britains Land Rover BTE status, I hadn't seen today's entrant, which trumps the Land Rover by a country-mile, making it look all a bit cheap and placky!

It's the gonad-challenged leader of the 4,000-odd-day Reich; Herr Adolf Hitler, in his Mercedes tourer, with straight-backed driver at the controls. Shot two years ago at the then September Sandown Park show, this has been sat in Picasa ever since, but two years is about par for the stuff in the queue! Adrian Little of Mercator (link) is to thank for allowing me to photograph it.

I can't remember if Adrian said if it was Elastolin or Lineol, but it has a porcelain-head Hitler so it could be Elastolin, although other people bought-in the figures for their vehicles; Arnold, Bing and Karl Bub, for instance, so I stand to be corrected.

The detail of the model is on a par with modern, similarly scaled (and unnecessarily expensive) 'executive desk toy' type limited edition things, and compared with my Land Rover, is in a different league.

The main construction is tin-plate, but much use is made of die-cast and white-metal parts, down to the little door-handles! The wheels are almost scale replicas with rubber tyres, steel rims and cast hubs on rod-axles.

If one thing lets it down it's the steering-wheel which is a simple tin-stamping which doesn't look right next to all the other, finer detailing? The Fuhrer also has a moveable arm so he can do his flicky-little Nazi salute, or madly wave at his granny!

I can't remember where this came from; it's cropped out of a larger (but un-watermarked) image, from somewhere - auction catalogue on feeBay? Anyway, you can see the cheaper, rival Märklin model has all-tin wheels/tyres and simpler figures, albeit three of them, probably small O-Gauge/40mm to boot? Whether the main-subject above is also a 1936 model Mercedes or not I don't know, there are differences between the mud-guards of the two vehicles?

A worthy - if temporary - winner of 'Best Toy Ever' I hope you'll agree; despite it's background politics, it's a beautiful thing and many thanks to Adrian for the chance to photograph it.

News, Views Etc . . . Airfix Entry Update

Really? He follows his tragic JIM thing with an attempted WWII spoiler (showing nothing special) 48-hours after I'd moved-on to esoteric ceremonials? And it took two of them? It's a slow-burn, as comedies go, but mildly amusing.

Then he has a whinge over the weekend, after saying - only the other day - he wasn't going to bother any more (not for the first time, as I pointed out on that occasion!), in which he seems to notice the PSTSM thing for the first time, despite having acknowledged it in the past? Has he the memory-problems of a goldfish?

" Over the years I have been called many things, most are unprintable here. Then I get called something that just does not make sense. The latest from sad Hughie is a case in point. He has called me Penn State Mafia. When I saw it I had to laugh. Clearly someone did not do his homework. Penn State does not mean the state of Pennsylvania for most people. Penn State for most people means Penn State University of which I am not a fan. This goes back to my state college days of seeing them always crying for more state money. I do not even support their sports teams.

I know Facebook has a Penn State Mafia group, I do not belong to it. So where Hughie could have gotten this term I have no idea. I do know that the late owner of Toy Soldier Thoughts call me Pennsylvania Mafia. That term is wrong as the word mafia is defined as a closed group of people in a particular field having a controlling influence. My site has always been to share news and information. I have no interest in controlling the hobby, I let that to other people.

Hughie amazes me with his calls of me damaging the hobby. I don’t see it from no one else saying the same thing. Also, he gets into fake news about me trying to top his showing of two Jim figures. On this matter, I just put two figures at random. they happen to be Jim from France. I look over his diatribes to see his latest silly attacks and care less about what he is talking about."

I haven't called him 'Penn State Mafia', ever, I refer to his coterie of acolytes and supporters as 'The' PSTSM, not him; I called him The Jabbering Fuck on day one and have stuck with it as it is particularly apposite. But again we've had this before; his whole first paragraph is a repeat of something he tried about 18-months ago - at the time I provided links/screen-caps to the commonality of Penn State as a short-form for Pennsylvania-something (trains, haulage, burger-chains and yes, even the university), so why is he repeating the point he made last time with equal ignorance and pointlessness? Goldfish!

Although it's nice to see he's Googled the cultural term 'mafia' and pasted the definition; managing to get five long words in a sentence, in the right order and correctly spelt for the first time since someone else wrote-up an 'interview' with him! Of course, in the last paragraph he's back to pure pidgin! It's just funny, listening to his brain work, 48-hours later!

Now I don't know the owner of Toy Soldier Thoughts (was that the odd, humorless Blog with no pictures that whined about everything and everyone in the hobby?), but if two people have independently chosen the same moniker for you, or yours, it's probably because it's appropriate, or deserved . . . or both! And again - said it before; but there's a history of Standinger falling out with people in the hobby.

And - of course - he IS controlling! In his first attack on me (back in 2016) he said I should '...go and do something else.'! What's not controlling about that! He has spent the three years since bombarding people in the hobby with eMails (and - I believe - telephone calls) telling them (not asking) what they should do with me and my blog, how they should support him and his blog, what and when they should comment or contribute &etc . . . all very 'controlling' behavior.

Both he and his little PSTSM fuck-monkey have suggested off-line organisations should have nothing to do with me, even publically; that's controlling! His whole approach to comments is an orchestra of control!

I rarely eMail people in the hobby to volunteer my opinions on anything, I never request, demand or cajole for comments or contributions, and I've never asked anyone to stop reading his blog, or to stop talking to him, although people who clearly get off 'the fence' earn my opprobrium . . . but we are like chalk and cheese. And those of you who know me, or receive TJF's missives will know both above points to be true.

This was funny; "Also, he gets into fake news about me trying to top his showing of two Jim figures." Well, I made a humorous aside connecting his constant sitting in my dust to gambling, specifically poker, but as with the 'Little Black Book' reference a while ago it went over his head like a fast jet, and we get his pathetic excuse for repeatedly posting stuff I've just posted, in a way no other Blog or Website does or ever has, just as we previously got a list of his note-books and what colour they were! A very stupid man.

'Fake News' is telling people three time that Blue Box Australians are in fact Hing Fat, and never correcting/explaining yourselves! Fake News is claiming to be number one plastic site when you're not, even though you're throwing money at tag-share! Fake News is dressing other people's customer announcements up as 'discoveries'! A very stupid man.

And it is the bain of stupid men that A) they don't know how stupid they are, so continue as if they aren't (because it's all they know), and B) they assume everyone else is roughly at their - stupid - level, because it's the only level they know!

In eleven years, you can count on the fingers of your two mitts the number of times I or any number of other Blogs have parked our tanks on the other's lawn. If I have done so (and I have a few times) it is usually due to genuine coincidence, and likewise, when someone parks their hardware on my lawn, it is clearly just 'one of those things' and happens very rarely!

It's true there is one Blog I occasionally get a bit close to, around Halloween , but I always post a link to the earlier article to acknowledge it's pre-eminence, and excuse my 'copy post' as the seasonal synergy it is. Likewise there is a newer Blog (no names no pack-drill!) who posts similar stuff to me, as I do to him, because we both like the same stuff (an eclectic bit of everthing!), but neither he nor I regularly post exactly the same stuff, within a few days, as Stadinger does, after me, all the bloody time!

But the author of shitestuff - being incredibly stupid - thinks no one's noticed his lack of originality or the fact that he just hasn't got the stuff, but he's a dealer! Not a collector, he has no vision, no grand plan, no imagination, all he's got is Russian customer announcements (increasingly posted elsewhere, first, these days; eBay or Facebook!) and chewing-the-cud on my leftovers! A very stupid man.

He has stated (after a year-or-so of denial) that he is following me 'very closely', so posting JIM (not Jim!) immediately after me is not 'random', it's calculated! As are all the other 'coincidental' postings on stadsshite, when he has 23,000 toy companies to chose from!

In the same post as his whine, he shows us his Marx lift-attendant (for the 2nd, or 3rd time? I call it shitestuff for a reason!), the day after I've posted a possible doorman/chauffeur (civilian in uniform), it's no coincidence, it's millions-to-one this keeps happening! And the fact that he thinks we're stupid enough to think otherwise says an awful lot about his opinion of the rest of us, and 'awful' is the operative word!

He has stated he will post the same as me 'but add information', yet he rarely adds as much as a jot or an iota. I am now following him, but I do it properly, add lots and am only doing to get through his thick-skulled, stupid head that the war - he started - is unwinnable, and - that what's good for the goose is equally good for the gander.

As to the damage being done; well, I said it was the group of them, not just him (but it's always about him - that's control-freaks for you!), and as far as the group goes, damage is being done, not only to friendships but the constant stream of bullshit . . . bullshit about Blue Box and Hing Fat, bullshit about Redbox-Blue Box and Tai Sang (Port Tain Sang!!!!!), bullshit about ZZ and PGH . . . DNG, Schylling, Supreme, Star and M-Toy, Coma/Basa, bullshit about aluminium moulds, bullshit about pricing . . . bullshit, bullshit, bullshit; they make it up as they go along, awful little Toy Soldier 'Mafia'!

And am I 'sad man', a 'sad boy' the 'saddiest person' or Hughie, am I 'a rival', 'one of our critics', 'my critic' or the 'emie' (that's shitespeak for 'enemy' to the rest of you)? He's the Jabbering Fuck, period.

●  ●●   ●●●    ●●●●     ●●●●●     ●●●●    ●●●   ●●  ●

Anyway - to the original text;

Nothing exciting today; I had a lazy weekend photographing wildlife (two new species - for me - a weird bug-thing and the most beautiful Rosemary Beetle - Google it; it's pretty as a peach) while the weather was nice, so a quick bit of 'housekeeping' today and 'another' Best Toy Ever from the archives tomorrow!

Following the F&G revelations in Plastic Warrior magazine I needed to update the early mounted figure post/page, which proved to be less of a problem than I thought it would be, most of the text is suitably questioning of the subject as to remain pretty clear if not accurate, and/or images to stand as they are for now, but the two recent comparison pictures need an 'Airfix' removed and a 'F&G' slipped in which has been done, and I've added a graphic for the hunters/dogs.

JIM is for Jouet Incassables Modernes

Or Jouet Incassable Matière [plastique] if you're the Limp-dicked Hussar!

Well, TJF 'saw' my two, with two of his own, so I'll 'raise' him six! Hey; it's his rules, I just feel I should carry-on playing, if only to give him a chance to win-back some of his legendary kudos!

I don't know which was the more amusing; the four of them (fuck-monkey, Hairband, Dildobreath and the Jabbering Fuck himself) spending a fortnight, over two posts, both in the blurb and the comments pretending they didn't know anything about Plasticom's Solabar, or TJF thinking he had to match my two JIM's with two of his own? It's tragic, that's what it is!

With Herforder Bierbar running-off to the Facepalnt to talk shit about PGH Effelder and/or Hungarian flats the day after he was corrected on Ingo Roggaz's ^Z_Z, this gang of idiots are doing a lot of damage to the hobby in pursuit of their petty, vindictive, envy-driven vendetta, or are they just even stupider than I've suggested they are?

We have a regular infantryman, a Foreign Legionary, a chap in blue I will assume is a marine/sailor, but he might be one of those Alpine Chasseur types, so I won't assume anything of the sort . . . Never assume, never assume! I'm not even going to attempt to ID the other three beyond the fact that they are all North African (Algerian/Moroccan) colonial troops of some kind; Tirailleurs . . . Méharistes, Spahi? JIM will know!

They're heading straight for me, are they Vichy? Time for me to scoot . . . !

N is for No Spanish Horses!

But more odds-&- sods of a ceremonial or 'on-parade' nature, indeed the first quartet started life a week or so ago in the same tub as two of the mounted reamsa's and the Argentine Lifeguard look-a-like, so may also be from the collection of Barry 'the legend' Blood, from that 2010 sell-off?

These being they! Two Danish guards from Reisler, in the everyday uniform, the red is the ceremonial, the black for day-in/day-out wear. To their left are two Mignalu plastic Monaco police (Carabineers de Monaco) in their summer dress uniform (they also have a dark version for winter), these are taken from a short experiment by Minot (CGB, not Barry) in Aluminium production back in the 1950's.

My three Athena's, I couldn't begin to explain anything else about them as there seem to be so many variations; red and blue, white and blue, kilts, bloused trousers, pom-poms - large, small and no, single or double 'deputy dog' ears, 'wing-boards' . . . and I must conclude that every regiment has its own uniform, or that several guards have summer and winter versions, there is an excellent book or two on them by Markos Plytos and they should make it clearer, in the meantime - my three are a good mix!

The first four were going to be with the Cavalry, before they expanded and I decided they must go seperately as a 'foot ceremonials' post, off to find the Evzones above, I checked Brian B's folders and found this 80'mil-odd chap, who's from Processed Plastic (thanks to Kent's site)'s US Air Force set.

Which in turn reminded me I had this chap (on the left) in with the unknown navy (or navy-like) figures, looking at him anew I suspect he's actually a chauffeur or doorman from a 1:35th scale car kit - Monogram, MPC/AMT-Ertl, Pyro or Revell? He's in hard polystyrene plastic anyway and someone's tried to glue him down by melting his base!

He - in turn - reminded me there was the other black plastic figure hanging around, seen on the right; he's soft polyethylene and I know nothing about him, I thought he must be Marx or MPC but doesn't seem to be either, has some features in common with the Remco Romans, but is lacking the fine detail seen on their shields, he's close to Marx's 60mm naval cadet marching, but of poorer quality and without the shoulder flap on the Marx figure's greatcoat, and, if it wasn't for the base, you might mistake him for an early experiment by Pater Cole's Replicants!

Anyone know, he seems to be a modern re-issue so I guess somewhere someone has a bucket-full of 'um? To be honest he looks like a neighbouring dictator's guard from the Trigan Empire and seems to be carrying an Elephant Brontosaurus-gun! The gun actually looks to be damaged at the tip, but inspection under a magnifying-glass suggests it's all there? Steam-punk Nazi!??!

ABC, Hong Kong rip-off's of Britains hollow-cast marching troops, they look better en-masse than they do individually!

A mix of French troops marching, seen recently here, but again looking better as a group, and also HK copies, this time cloned from Starlux.

A Salvation Army chap I shot on Adrian's stand years ago and which has been sat in Picasa ever since! I may actually have one myself, but either a different pose or a different flag, and I'm not sure where I put it? He's aluminium and Wend-Al.

A scaler on the left, while on the right - they are all ensconced in their new tub! the HK stuff (ABC/Starlux-copies) have their own tubs!

The cavalry grew to fill two tubs, Reamsa and 'others', and the foot got one of their own. The red plastic Reisler's (which we've seen; Blog passim) will stay with the British guards for now, but as this sample grows and fills a deeper tub, they may migrate across (with the correct paperwork - no illegal's here!), while you can see the lovely RHA chap Chris Smith sent the blog a while back has joined them.

Because PVC can melt polystyrene, the three Greeks and the artilleryman get PE bags, which prevents that kind of damage occurring and provides padding for all the figures in the tub.