Strangely these appeared on Shitestuff the
other day, grandly announced to his eager readership by the 'legend' that is
TJF (legend in his own lunchtime!) as Co-Ma
figures, but . . . err . . . they aren't! Anyway, in the interests of setting
things straight (again!) let's look at them here, now . . . and dispel a couple
of recent myths!
I bought six (a 'set') of the seven above
(we've looked at the gunmetal one - top left - in the past) at the recent PW show in Whitton/Twickenham, and -
hurrying (so many bargains, so little time!) - failed to notice until I got
them home that in fact half of them were Res
Plastic's issues and the other half were the dwarfish copies/piracies of
the original Co-Ma Romans and Barbari
or (and henceforth-) 'Vikings'.
Knowing (after a call) that they would
reappear at Sandown Park I prepared the above drawing (read scribble!) to help
sort out any remaining figures (I knew they'd sold well on the day) and hopefully
find some of the ones I needed.
Taking the picture above for the hell of
it, I realised I didn't actually need the drawing, as I could just load the
images of the figures back onto my camera and use that, so no real reason to
subject you to my skeletal-zombie figures either, but I have!
Almost total success was achieved with
another of the copies secured, and all three of the missing RP's truffle-hunted from the pile! The
same Stadsshite post also explained to its readers that some of the figures had
holes for weapons (as - of course - the Co-Ma
originals did), this too was a failure of TJF's 'knowledge base' . . . and his abilities to study photographs; two
of the figures have crude daggers where they used to have ring-hands in the
original, which these aren't!
A similar exercise was carried-out with the
Romans, but no similar success was forthcoming, so it's just the three to add
to my Co-Ma originals and previously
seen copy. It seems the 'fallen helmets' added to the bases (and passed on to the
RP re-sculpts) were something
conjured by the first copyists who made the above figures, each helmet lying
approximately where a bump lays in the Co-Ma
original's grass-etched bases.
A couple of comparisons; the copies are
much smaller than the Co-Ma donors, but
RP beefed them up again, a bit, and
while the Co-Ma figures were hard
polystyrene, the copies are a soft polyethylene. Note that the gold copy
doesn't have horns, but rather two stumps or studs, which seems to be
deliberate, but could be a short-short moulding?
More interestingly, the RP's are - mostly - also a soft
polyethylene, but one or two of them are the harder ethylene or polypropylene
of the gold Romans we've seen before . . . seen rather too much-of, some might
feel, but I see Erwin was whinging (again) back at Christmas that he'd never
used the RP's, even though the Vichy's
limp-dicked hussar (born from the thigh of an angry, retarded troll) has taken
my cropped enlargement of Erwin's 'Peruvian' RP figure to illustrate his (hussar's) RP entry in a spreadsheet!
Which is itself (the spreadsheet) equally
interesting, as it's also full of my images, despite the limp-dick having gone
on record as 'barely knowing' and 'rarely visiting' my site! But I'll be
dealing with several of his utterances in a separate post.
They're all awful; the TJF & the PSTSM, the Vichy
French and AFD's, along with the three lick-spittle Aussies (Hall, O'Connell
and Pye)by turn ; hypocritical, shite-talking, envious, plagiarists, making it up as
they go along, or sitting in other-people's dust and vociferously talking-up
each other's nonsense in a group-hug of fuck-wittedness!
Although I let the gold RP go six-years ago, I had taken loads
of images (although I think I'm using this one again? Doh!), so we can look at
all three types together. Obviously, the Res'
is scaled 'by eye' but when seen together, he will be found to be slightly
larger than the copy but noticeably smaller than the Co-Ma original.
Co-Ma's sculpt is a well-proportioned, proud, graceful figure; sculpted
with some care (for the 1950/60's), striking hard, two-handed, at an enemy he
is clearly making eye-contact with, a sweeping stroke which will - hopefully - remove
the protagonist's head!
The metallic-blue one is a much-poorer
copy, the neck lost and the legs shortened leaving an over-developed torso. He
is still 'in-line' with his base and remnants of the Co-Ma details (buttons and things) are there, but he's swinging his
sword with less purpose!
While Res
Plastic's figure is (like the rest of both their sets) a re-working, which
seems to refer to both the previous versions; anatomy has improved toward the
original, but the neck is still missing, the torso has been turned slightly,
and with a further slight turn of the head he is swinging more wildly (in the 'ineffectual'
rather than 'angry' sense of the word), the 'fallen helmet' has been cleaned-up
(but retained), the buttons, however, have been replaced with some poor
machine-tool marks aping the leather segments of the original's 'cuirass' -
it's probably got some Latin name! Leatheretta-segmata jerkinius?
The fact that the slight musculature on the
Co-Ma figure's right wrist/forearm
has - by the incidence of the RP
figure - become large welts or scales, suggests the employment of a pantograph
in both copying exercises, but work has also been done by hand (body posing),
and machine-tools (leather, 'fallen helmet') to change the copy-sculpts
slightly.
Another comparison, Co-Ma to the left and two of the copies; I've placed a bit of Blue-Tac under the gold figure to give a
suggestion of the missing RP version.
It is a fact, that despite seven or eight
mentions, posts or forum threads on these figures over the last 24-months, here
and with the derisible-duo, as yet, no evidence has come to light of
fourth or fifth types, apart from that rather-odd set, looking like RP's but with hexagonal holes in their
backs - where you might expect to find the RP
marks! I believe they are an act of vandalism designed to win an argument - which
the authors' had already lost?
There is little or no evidence of DSG figures either, except insofar as
with both hard and soft plastic versions of RP-marked
figures around, DSG may have run the
mould (which they are known to hold, or have held) unchanged, or
wholesaled/retailed the/some leftover RP-marked
stock. I say "little or..."
as - if they are genuine - the hex-hole figures seen on Shitestuff may be DSG, but they weren't presented as such
by 'Cheech & Chong'!
Neither is there any empirical evidence of Basa having ever carried the Co-Ma figures (which they may have done)
or produced their own copies - which they almost certainly didn't. As they (Sterwin)
have led us round the garden-path several times trying to cover-up Erwin's
original falsehood (that the gold RP's
were Peruvian product), one has to ask why they still visit these figures? The
figures announced the other day in the 'other place' (as he refers to me!) as
ring-handed Co-Ma, are neither Co-Ma, nor ring-handed!
Indeed, while my own ministrations over the
course of the debate have provided some facts by way of obvious conclusion, the
pathetic pair of poltroons have provided piss-all of pertinence and only
succeeded in confusing themselves and each other as we saw earlier in the
journey!
The two figures have - in point of fact - been
armed with crude daggers, made by simply drilling into one half of the tool and
removing the little spigot with would have formed the hole in the hand, so that
both the hole and the drill fill with polymer, creating a stumpy, stabbing
instrument!
Or, at least, it would be how the
originator might do it, the pirates' just avoid the hole while- (or fill it in before-)
pantographing, and then only have to drill the stabber-stud!
On the subject of the copies; I don't know
who produced them, it may be in the latest book on Italian figures (which I
don't have), but I don't recall it being in the earlier volume (which I do
have!), it'll probably be someone like Plasticrom
(Cané/Grisoni), PRB or Ro-Plast who were
all producing rack-toy/'bazaar' stuff and/or knock-offs, in the 1970's?
Given the metallic colours' similarity to
those Cane 54/60-mil Vikings which
were everywhere about fifteen/twenty years ago (I think PB Toys still have a load?), they may be a Grisoni branded thing?
One is tempted to wonder - given that other
people produced several versions of their main earners (Britains khaki Infantry or Starlux
combat troops for instance) whether Co-Ma
were involved in the soft-plastic copies, but the copies are so poor, that
seems unlikely.
True: Britains
Hong Kong khaki infantry were as poor compared to their grandparents, but there
was a longer period of time between the two generations, and the market had
moved-on further when those late PVC atrocities came out of the Far-Eastern colony.
Comparison between the five 'pairs'; you
wouldn't be hiding those shield-located marks so easily with a heated
screwdriver!
When you look at something as closely as
we've ended-up looking at these recently, you tend to end up with as many new
questions as answers, and with these as well as who made the first set of
copies it's also how Co-Ma allowed
these copies to come-about, in the same country?
But looking - again - at Britains, who are
known to have defended their intellectual property many times both in the
hollow-cast and the plastic eras, yet still suffered loads of piracies,
particularly of the khaki infantry, including a few UK-based companies, it may
be that sometimes it's easier to turn a blind-eye than try to challenge in
court, especially if slight changes to the sculpts will only provide a pay-day
for the lawyers!
Also, Co-Ma
did change direction, first toward kits and railway accessories, while by the
1980's they were producing more infant-targeted toys and big bath/beach stuff,
and those changes seem to have begun quite soon, hence the interest in genuine
examples of their [original] figures, in a sea of copies? Perhaps they granted
permission for some of the cloning; perhaps they couldn't care because the
clones weren't treading on their 'new lawn'?