M is for Mini Micro Men Mecha's & Monsters

As I mentioned the other day, Brian Berke has sent another lovely parcel to the Blog, and I will cover it fully after I've done Peter's parcels and the last show-report, as it has some very interesting stuff in it, but some of it was so interesting it was deserving of a seperate post, and this is that post!

 

When he emailed me to let me know the parcel was on its way, he added "There is a small box of possibly the smallest plastic figures ever, I would paint them if I could see that well!", and I replied that I could only think of some which came with either a space station or nuclear submarine kit, some of/one of which lots I have in storage, but badly painted (in red & black so probably from the space station kit), so I was looking forward to seeing what he sent, and what he sent was beyond my imagination!

 

There were actually two little boxes, one stuffed with figures I did recognise, the other having all sorts of kit figures from Tamiya's 1:35th downwards, to the diminutive little chaps seen here!

The ones I recognised were the MPC/AMT/Ertl figures from the Battle of Hoth model kit, part of the Star Wars range! On the left we have the Hoth Base's Rebel defenders, with (top left) an X-Wing pilot (who can be 'Luke'), on the right the Imperial Snow Troops, although I'm not sure about the pointing rebel, he may be a turncoat Imperial trooper!

 

During it's 1980's meltdown Airfix carried some of these, and I have a few in that washed-out shiny-grey 'styrene they used, but I only have three Rebel poses I think, so this, nine-poses, was a real surprise, and in a neutral fawn, better for painting . . . if you have the eyesight! And there's probably a hundred in the box, so you could incorporate them in some wargame with maybe Galoob's mini space-craft/vehicles?

I thought these two might belong with the Mecha's below, but they might be from one of the Lost In Space kits, as why would they be taller than giant robots! But clearly measuring something much taller than themselves, and in typically 1960's 'space' fatigues!

These are those mentioned Mecha's, and probably from a more modern kit, but all this stuff goes back to the 1980's now, so maybe not THAT new, and again, from the size of the bot's, something much larger, like a huge space-ship or diorama kit? Possibly, of course, a more esoteric board-game?

These have to be a space-station kit? Or one of several Apollo kits, I've recently picked up the Revell 1:96th kit, and I think the Revell 1:48th kit's figures were elsewhere in Brian's parcel, so who did a 1:150 (approximately N-gauge) NASA type space kit? Aren't they charming? They may be from an International Space Station kit, if that's a hatch-cover he's waving about?

 

 

On the right is another of the AMT-Airfix (et al)'s kits, this one is actually 1:72, and obviously Jabba's Kowakian monkey-lizard; Salacious B. Crumb (the 'monster' of the title), from the Throne Room kit, we looked at some of them here.

 

The coffin lid is a complete mystery, looks like the same plastic as the mega-bots, but a totally different subject mater? Maybe some Aurora horror kit which has escaped my attention, or a detailing on one of those Ed Roth'esque custom-car/cartoonish vehicle kits?

The NASA type is around 9mm, and the Lost in Space chap is a good 15mm, with the Star Wars upright pilot & bino's guys around 14mm. A lovely bunch to find in a parcel, and many thanks to Brian for sending them all to the Blog.

 

Meanwhile, in the sands of the deserts of Egypt, especially the plain behind the great pyramids, the wind occasionally reveals these teeny-tiny sculptures, likely religious tokens, votive offerings or similar keepsakes, here a cast-gold antelope and a small lioness, probably carved in turquoise, the stone, although it could be glazed-clay 'faïence'?

 

The image was from the internet, and has been sitting in Picasa for years, waiting for exactly this post, it knew . . . It knew! And that's the gods of the Pharaohs for you, don't mess with them!

D is for Design Eye - Ultimate Explorers 'Ancient Egypt'

Sad that the series only ran to the two sets, but then the recent Klutz sets with figures only managed four titles, while the ones a contributor found in Europe for PW magazine was only two as well, I think, but between the three similar lines you get a clue as to what a larger run might include - Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gladiators, Medieval, Pirates, Space, Circus, Farm & Zoo . . . I guess a Phidal Disney for 5.99 is easier - more figures less craft faffing!

Because similar things lend themselves to similar photogenicity (if that's a word, and if it isn't; it should be!), so this post is almost the same as the last one, just with different images, which might make the blurb sparser?

Cover and contents here, similar mix, but paints and an ink-stamper up the ante on craft in the absence of a catapult! The 30 (3x10) HO figures of the medieval set are replaced by only 12 (3x4) in this set, but there's less play-value in civilians I suppose! The booklet doesn't seem to have a byline/given author this time and another board-game is printed on the back of another fold-down . . .

. . . of an imperial or religious monument, this being a conglomeration of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel (famously moved under UNESCO funding, several hundred meters, in my childhood to save them from being flooded by Lake Nasser after the building of the High Aswan Dam), married with a pair of obelisks and Karnak's restored Khonsu Temple walls as a backdrop.

They are rendered as they would have been at the time, so colourful and no missing heads! there's also a couple of Sphinxes and a pop-up religious procession, again it's all sized to use the small figure included in the set.

Card game playing pieces lye behind a two-sided painting guide for both sizes of figure, but the guide is clearly using larger-sized models of the three diminutive sculpts, it would take a master-painter indeed to get that level of detail onto the actual figures, also they look more Egyptian here!

The two finished 'wealthy Egyptians' actually looking more Babylonian or Biblical! I only have these in the hard polypropylene type plastic, I don't know if a soft PVC'ish issue ever occurred? The one thing I failed to record when doing these shots, was the other issuer (there's two versions [earlier publisher?] of one back-cover) and it may be that there's a link between issue and plastic type? I can add anything relevant to the A-Z post at a later date?

Upper shot is a reverse-order of the previous post's, the lower shot is the same image as last time - I forgot to take two slightly different ones! The Crescent 'berserker' was found to be only 50mm to his helmet top, so the king is approximately 54mm to his eye-line which is how some measure them anyway, you could call them 60mm at a pinch, it's all subjective and the Horus figure in this set has  a very deep base - he slips on to one of the card press-outs if I recall correctly.

Those press-outs include a number of Pyramids (about 10?) in various (7 or 8?) sizes, a gold-plated funereal-barge and attendant tender!

I also found an image which belongs on the previous post so I'll add it there later, while there are a couple of scans which will go on the A-Z entry, and which I'll try to get done later tonight.

D is for Design Eye - Ultimate Explorers 'Castles'

Looked at in Plastic Warrior's little brother One Inch Warrior, many years ago now, and not by me, but I made it my business to track them down once whoever had covered had done so!

Interactive books, or 'activity packs', there were two and we will look at the other shortly, Castles dealt - obviously - with medieval forts, and you get some figures in two scales (approximately 54mm and 15mm), some plastic jewels for craft projects (make a crown type of thing, a clip-together catapult, a booklet (authored by Susan Churchill), a scroll, some game-playing paraphernalia and the game itself, which hides . . .

. . . a fold-down fort! Specifically, the entrance to a Norman castle tower/keep with raised walk-way to a barbican gate-house, draw-bridge and mote. It's quite a complicated arrangement with several layers and various connecting pieces, along with a couple of other features.

Here on the left the rooms of the keep are revealed by a fold-back section of the wall being pulled away, while on the right a wooden portcullis can be raised and lowered - a slight 'continuity error' is that it takes the drawbridge chains with it!

The figures; Earlier this year I suggested elsewhere that the king might be based on a statue of Alfred the Great, but then spent a few days trying to track it down on Google and while finding several, including a couple in similar garb, none of them were the right pose, so it may be a more unique sculpt, or based on another statue (Richard I, or John - it still looks familiar?), he's compared with the similar figure from the other, Egyptian, set.

Above them are the three poses of small figure - crossbow, longbow and swordsman. I have found sevearl sets over the years (and lost one!), and I now have samples in both a hard polypropylene (left-hand trio) and a soft PVC or replacement material in a similar soft rubbery composition - right-hand.

 

Airfix figures of this age tended to 23mm, so they are getting on for 20, but the knights are a tad smaller, while the Egyptians have heavy bases, so 15mm or 'HO' compatible is a better bet, they can be used with the fold-down fort . . . or on the carpet.

The catapult is a little unsteady in that the swinging arm is rather suspended in thin-air and held in place by a rubber-band. On the left a pair are accompanied by Airfix yobbo's of the Sheriff of Nottingham's mob for size reference.

On the right the machine is compared with stone-throwers from Zvezda (lower, similar wheeled-catapult), Orion (white, a later Einarm with wrought-iron spring action) and the Elastolin Onagar, but here in its undecorated (and rather glue-smeared) for-France Ougan-branded guise.

Well, he follows me all the time and they were in the queue! Taken on 19th May, for those getting hot under the collar . . . and it's a question answered! Egypt next.

A few hours later - I found this in the folder for the Egyptian set, it's a cage behind sliding wall sections, there's a winder behind it (as artwork, not working!), so you can send your pitiful prisoners into the dungeon to rot!
 

B is for Box-ticking Boring Board-game!

It's not really boring, it can be quite fun, with the ruthlessness of Monopoly, yet without the drawn-out, slow-deaths which makes the latter so painful if you aren't the 1-in-eight winner!

But it is a real box ticker; there's tons on the internet, about dozens of versions, both current and vintage so I'm  just getting the Parker and Board Game tags up.

Both a bit tatty I held on to one to wait for the other to come out of storage, they are over a month-since gone to recycling, but these are what I consider to be 2nd (upper) and 3rd (lower) standard versions of the box, the 1st version had a game set-up photograph (I think) with the 'snowflake' pieces of the original game.

Contents; I'd forgotten it's a game with a biggly number of dice! Biggly-biggly, that's a Donald-fact! Hey, I haven't properly mined the comedy aspect and he'll be gone on the 20th Jan! Kept the rules pamphlet for scanning into the archive.

Boards, I seem to have picked up the Star Wars board at some point but don't know what I did with the pieces, if I ever had them? I think the 2nd version (top) is the same as the 1st version, while the 3rd has a more 'parchment' look to it and the Star Wars one is rather bland, if you ask me!

Newer on the left, older on the right and anyone over 40 should remember the strange set of asterisks, snowflakes and cheese slices of the original game! Nominally 10mm in scale/size, due to the thickness of the bases I suspect with judicious use some of these could feed into 15mm war-games armies as well? With nappies provided by the 1990's set and AWI/Marlborough covered by the newer figures.

And if you want to do it without paint, there are dozens of 'nations' now, with different main colours and variations between print-runs!

That's them, done!

T is for Two - Cantonieres . . . Cantinières . . . Canteniers?

Not to be confused with Cantonniers (two 'n's) who are road workers (on railways?) or Cantonnières who are the feminine type, but not necessarily female, just confused! Those flibbertigibbets with a barrel of booze who follow armies, anyway!

A real Picasa clearer, or more accurately Picasa sorter-out, as removing four images is a slow way of emptying the laptop, but it does unify two related items and gets them gone! The one having been hanging around since 2012, intended for another Blogger, but I never got his email and he seems to have stopped blogging now, the other a recent find?

This is the older one, I suspect a French piece (CGB Minot?), solid, 54mm and on a substantial base, she could just as easily be a home-painted casting of more recent origin (post-1960's), she's a useful paperweight if nothing else, but quite nicely 'drawn' and well painted in a 'toy soldier' style -  semi-matt though. I can't explain why, but she looks more Portuguese than French to me? However; I went with the tricolour for the frame-boarder!

Thanks to Adrian at Mercator Trading (link) for letting me shoot her . . . with a camera, seven years ago!

This one ought to be the easier for me to ID but it isn't! Del Prado did a part-work set over here 'Relive Waterloo' which may have had a canteen lady (I'm not falling for that mess in the title!) in the higher numbers (126 issues meant over 750-quid for the whole 'work'), but I bailed-out after about issue 15?

The card here is in Spanish or Portuguese (I don't pretend to know either, but can muddle through the context of a text; here - soldiers and strategy revisited (or revealed) in miniature?), and while Del Prado did other sets similar to the Waterloo set - possibly from the website - in France (Austerlitz) and maybe Spain and deAgostini, Altaya, (also Spanish) Atlas (mostly Corgi products?) Eaglemoss-AMC, Hachette, SC Content Media (Hungary, using Ocean in China) and others (that US/Australian one) have issued figures as part-works in various sizes, I can't place this one.

Also she's a little closer to a 15mm scale (or HO's 18mm?), even for a young woman (as you can see from the Airfix pilot, even the pony/mule is a bit small), so - does anyone know the origin of this small, whitemetal, carded for a part-work, moustachioed canteen lady? I shot it last month, but it may have been in the storage-lot I did for RTM, in which case - probably dating from the 2010's or earlier?

V is for Vintage - Waddington's

Sorry Germans, that's a toughie of a title! Because Parker bought Waddington's they share the KPH box, and this is the tail-end of the photo-shoot, we'll look at more Waddington's another day, and Parker's Risk figures will need a post of their own one day.

Waddington's Table Soccer carries 28/30mm statuette type figures of footballers which we looked at just over a year ago, the 'master collection' is only a bag of oddments which have come in, but there is a boxed set somewhere in the garage along with a set of the next lot (below) so we'll return to them here one day for completeness sake!

I think the yellow and brown figure is an early goalkeeper, but the other may be home painted, and I can't remember if the black ones are referees or late version 'reduced paint' goalies? Another reason to return to the set when I find the big boxes of games!

As a playing mechanism Camelot is a sort of simplified draughts (checkers) / fox & geese hybrid, but with the kings present from the start! These are the 'pawns' and are a reasonable 25/28mm-compatable knight, relaxed, in full armour, there are ten each (of both colours) of them and I bet a few of you have some of these in your junk, WTF or TBS (to be sorted) pile!

The 'kings' are closer to 15/20mm-compatible for those looking to beef-up their armies with unusual figures, and you get four of each, this one is an earlier version on a double-plinth base with ogeed edges, manufactured in a softer polystyrene or phenolic of some type, compare with the sharper single disc in brittle 'kit' polystyrene above.

Again I have a set somewhere, so I'll replace the vague description with something more solid when I return to them someday.

O is for Old Basing

The village/hamlet to which the ruins of Basing House are now abutted.

This plaster model is closer to 15mm (for the gamers among you) and has given very different treatments to the layouts of both complexes, also you can see clearly how the landscape contours would have affected fighting in a way you can't really replicate on a gaming table

 

You can also see how fortified they were in this simplified architectural model, I count six keeps, a few other blockhouses and a more than a dozen other towers and turrets, both are walled and both [dry] moated along with other walls, banks and ditches. Note also the four bridges and central courtyard between both complexes and the main gatehouse/keep.

It was a formidable objective, raised above the surrounding landscape and with stores for a siege - its eventual taking must have had a negative effect on the Royalist moral and wider war-effort.

 

The two blurb panels are interesting reading from the period.

O is for Other Hong Kong Horses

Mentioned the other night in the old show-photo's post, these are about 15mm for gaming purposes, and were issued in Christmas Crackers here (UK), but probably also in gum-ball machines here or elsewhere.

Britains Swoppet poses, there seem only to be the six (three each; Cowboys & Indians) and like the Lone Star cracker toys, seem to come in every colour under the sun, but in one's, or the occasional two or three! Also like the L*S figures, they are single mouldings of rider and horse together. There were a couple of other colours in the shot the other day I think, which at 7 figures was likely someone else's amassing!

This (bottom right-hand shot) is four-years worth, with my original sample in the upper scan (and a 1IW shot to the left?), they did grow somewhat - as a sample - between the photo's being taken and them going into storage, so we'll look at them again one day when they are all together and get-at-able!

These are also a tad removed from the run-of-the-mill Hong Kong hollow-horses, in that the horses are solid, but otherwise there's not much in it, the foot figures are standard fare, and the riders likewise: common HK post-Giant poses, with the leg-plugs.

Given away with breakfast cereal, they were also available in the US (maybe first?) so it will probably be one of the less popular brands over here like Force or Grape-nuts?

F is for Frederico (and Fabiano) Frogman?

Sorting things out for the MPC 'Minis' ships article I promised a while ago (hopefully posted-up over the coming weekend) and found this while the 'Unknown Vessels' box was out again, so fired-off a few shots.

You may recall the Italio-Spanish post I did back in March (only just down the page due to lack of posting in April!), well, I'm told this two-man vignette is also Italian? I don't have a maker's name or era, but it's getting that waxy brittleness of some early plastics so I guess quite early?

The figures are about 15mm in size, but due to their being sat astride a large bomb, they don't look too small with your bog-standard 1:76-72 plastics, as can be seen from the Airfix figure. Note also; the large card-carton staple, used to weight it for bathroom or garden-pond operations! Can anyone put a name to it...from the sculptural style I fancy Co-Ma (?) but suspect otherwise!

[Later the same day] By Request of Anne O'Leary - painter extraordinaire;

With a canvas tender (courtesy of Airfix) in attendance, a pair of intrepid navy commandos set off on operation 'Sink the Scharnbizpitz'! It floats at just the right depth for the little square visors to be above the water.