E is for Ellem, or Not, as the Case May Be!

Having dealt with Merehall, and added suitable notes to the two older posts with them, I thought I should address Ellem, as they've just have one of their Tag's removed, but it will probably need to be restored when I re-read the articles fully and work out what I posted back then - with all the caveats and questions marks they needed!

 

Ellem were a 'mark' which appeared in the late Sharna-owned Cherilea catalogues, and were an attempt to cut costs by importing cheap product from Hong Kong, rather than relying on the expensive stuff made here, in the midst of, or possibly as a result of, all that industrial dispute/labour turmoil of the period.

This is a box of Ellem Crusaders, with three non-Ellem knights on top, off to the right-hand side, and also courtesy of John Begg (see previous post) but photographed a year earlier.

The Crusaders seem to be the same product as carried by Star Toys, so Ellem may well be a phantom-brand construct of Sharna/Cherilea, while the other two (one very mucked-about with) have the deep-hollow bases of the 'French-looking' paratroopers we saw here.

 

On the other hand, the sky-blue one is another type/maker again, having little circular indents round the locating pegs, and much-thicker walls, to an also hollowed-out base.

This is from an old photoshoot from years ago (2013) and proves little, as the angle is wrong to compare bases, but we will be returning to these from time to time, not least when further attributions turn-up! In the meantime they are just four more, probably from two (or three?) sources, with the Crusader being possibly Star and/or Ellem.

My sample of knock-off shields, the trouble with these is that they are peg-together rather than the heat-welded over-moulding of Timpo's, and consequently can be mucked-about with, by the human owners, within or between makers, to produce colour combinations which never left any of the factories, therefore I offer it only as a sample. Note: some of them are so poorly made, the symbol extends beyond the extent of the shield-board.

 

It's funny, someone used this image (seen before here at Small Scale World) without permission the other day and when I suggested he might be so quick as to enter my grave, he just laughed? You catch someone, in public, ripping you off, and they just don't care, they have no conscience in the matter?

 

Understand this; the more I'm plagiarised, the more I'm followed-up on, the more 'eemies' I have, the better the job I'm doing here, and my stats prove that, because they're all here, reading this, every day - the farty, envious, insecure, thieving, copycat, little scrotes!

 

Someone else in Hong Kong (or one of the above known or unknown makers) produced these copies, also of Timpo, but the earlier 'solids', imported (with poor-quality 'swoppet' foot figures) into the states by Ideal in large playsets, they were the same counter-top box singles here I think, or some bottle-bag rack-toy types? And someone reminded us it was Ideal the other day, but the post seems to have been taken down, so I can't find his name to credit him!

 

Back to Ellem, and some rather Blue Box-looking, Britains-copy, animal solids, in the zoo set, but I suspect 2nd or 3rd generation piracies, and shown here purely to help you sort them out of larger samples of similar animals, I know I have a dozen or so Ostriches now, all 'unknown'!

B is for Box-ticking Bible-bashing Belligerents

Crusaders; Reivers of the Levant! We know these are Supreme because Tiger told the hobby they were when they announced they would be carrying the full-sized range over a decade ago, through the pages of a leading hobby magazine. Whether Tiger were going through Toy Major or direct I don't know, but the impression was they were working directly with Supreme.

It makes you wonder then that ten years later someone would be talking such shite about Supreme on the PSTSM notice-board and in direct attacks on me? But if the individual had got used to making things up as he went along, and further; got used to getting away with making things up as he went along, you cease to wonder about him and wonder instead at those around him? Several of whom were older and should've been wiser!

Knights Hospitaller . . . Templar? If the crosses used by the orders are specific, these are Knights Generic (White) I fear! In the best traditions of most other plastic crusaders! The separate weapons are quite good I think, a short lance with hand guard and another with a nice three-pointed pennant. All Italeri copies and again; a couple of the figures are similar to those in smaller-scale Supreme lines/sets.

Knights Generic (Black), Teutons, or the other Hospitaller! More Italeri copies; the horse with the lozenge base (left, and the one with the aubergine-shaped* base, right in the 'white' shot) are standard horses in the Supreme inventory being used in most sizes/scales and other (non-medieval) sets. Indeed one of the ways of working them all out is the re-use of figure poses or horse sculpts!

The foot figures are all taken from Italeri Set 6009 The Knights, the mounted from Italeri Set 6019 Teutonic Knights.

*brinjal, brown-jolly, eggplant, Guinea squash, Jew's apple!

A is for Ahhhhhh! The Children's Crusade!

Well, you've seen me frustrate myself wreaking a big red Dinky London omnibus, while my brother sleeps oblivious next to me, you've seen the the pair of us as biscuit-chomping cowpoke gunslingers, now I seem to be a crusader!

I have absolutely no recollection of this whatsoever, however I think it might be 1969 (I look about six - far left) when I stayed with my Godmother while our parents were in the 'States. The guy in the middle is her son Charles, who was a couple of years older than me (so eigh'tish in this shot?), and while I thought the other guy might be an old friend Tobin, I suspect he's actually some one from the School I attended while staying there (Bishops Stortford), as my brother is absent and he must be my age/from my class, as Charles was a year or two above . . . or even attending a different school?

Could be a school-play? But 'Blondie' hasn't gone to the same lenths with his costume? Although his bow looks a little more professional than mine! Am I Robin Hood to Charles's Friar Tuck, or a man-at-arms to his crusader?

Fun thing to find!

The Children's Crusade

M is for Many Ways to Make a Medieval

We're looking at the figures I lost (the images of) and which in the searching-for, managed to lose a near finished article due to my inherent fuckwittery . . . and the fact that Lenovo gives you half a split-second to cancel a shutdown, and even if you manage it, then overrides your [two] instructions and shuts-down anyway!

Cherilea's small scale (50-mil-odd) knights in armour, they come in at least two sizes (small and smaller!) and various versions, plastic colours and paint-ways. The figure top-left is a metal original, and the reduction in size between him and the larger plastics isn't down to a pantograph, but just that plastic shrinks more than metal as it cools - from the same mould.

The smaller ones however, may well be the result of copying by pantograph? Although a quick study of the plumes will reveal there are at least two cavities (or tools) in each size, possibly more.

My arranging of them has no real significance, but from this angle you can see further variations in base-shape and mould release-pin marks, while painted and unpainted on various colours of plastic are to be seen. The jade green pair are a more modern reissue, but still - now - fifteen to twenty years old?

The Crusaders; The two on either end of the upper row are the metal ones this time and the one on the right doesn't seem to have been carried-over to the plastic line. Again, two clear sizes (visibly three for the standing pose actually) and a variety of finishes including gold mail, but no coloured plastics - bar the re-issue. I think the fifth and sixth from the left on the top row have suffered at the hands of their owners' artistic callings!

The cross on the metal one's shield is much broader so it must have been re-cut when they prepared the mould for plastic-production, or they went straight to new tools . . . or I haven't found a plastic one with a broad cross yet?

The 'enemy', especially if you are a Kurd cut-loose by the Orange Loon! These are all brittle and I have a sample as large as the other two sets, but most are damaged. A third pose existed in metal (carrying standard), but I've not seen it in plastic, and it's usually broken when you find it in metal!

And, clearly a different sculptor, these and the other two metal poses are far more animated and anatomically different from the more relaxed or statuary knights and crusaders. The metal range was all together bigger with the four Saracens, four crusaders and three knights that I know of.

L is for Little Chaps

Seems like synergy to follow yesterday's with today's smallies, another box-ticker as I have loads of these in storage, different sizes, colours, plastic &etc. as while all the purists were sticking with hollow-casts or 54mm, I was hoovering-up these sub-scales! Anyway we will look at them properly another day, for now these are recent incomers, I still pick them up when I can as the Saracens are hard to find intact!

 Cherilea - 45/50mm

Spear-man suffering from some 're-paint'!

Comparison with two Hilco 'stand'ee-up'ees' and one other Hill

All the above from hollow-cast moulds, yesterdays sizes were out by two inches, I've corrected!

U is for Unknown Medieval Knights, Men at Arms and the odd Camp-follower

Moving along from the Ancients, we arrive at the medieval period with another bunch of unknowns, any help gratefully received.

A couple of Normans; painted and based, but not a brilliant shot given that the hoses may need to be separately ID'd, people did tend to swap them around! The lance could have done with a clipping I think, it's about14 scale-feet long, or about 25 of the rider's feet!

I think these are all the same maker, if fact I'm so sure I haven't numbered them separately, except the horse-parts and rider who lacking the same exact bases, could be from another source?

Five odds; the horse may be from the same maker as figures in the image 2, while the next two (Crusaders?) look a bit Garrison? But are marked only lightly, and not in the italic font the rest of my Garrison's are? [I think - they're all in storage!]

This chap, from all four sides ('cos I have four!) may also be from the same maker as the previous ' image 2' lot?

Again one or two of these have similar codes, but others are definitely from different makes. The ECW 31s is a smaller figure and the pirates (if that's what they are) look monkish!

The more European-looking chap at 5J, may go with the lot at 6H but his base is a tad heavier and his clothing sufficiently different to earn him a separate bag at some point? Indeed 5H has a similar base, but is from a different line/set being less 'Euro-renaissance' and more 'Sealed Knot'!

51 looks a bit Stadden-like in pose and execution of sculpting, but is unmarked?

The aforementioned set along the bottom row with a few more odds-and-sods. A nice 15mm mounted knight and an Aztek (?) are te best of the bunch, but I'd like to ID them all eventually?

Home-cast piracies? Interesting though, despite seeing better-days and I know some people did advertise err.... 'derivative' figures in the modelling press back in the day, anyone know if someone put their name to these knock-offs? They seem to have used the US Cavalry version of the horse (without the heavy reins) - for ease of casting?

A lovely Janissary painted-well by my regular painter - Mr. Anonymous! Was it you? He's been stood onto a cut-up Airfix camel's base, but I haven't the heart to de-base him and see if he's marked, so hopefully someone will recognise him? He's also one of the larger figures in this lot; closer to 28mm.

T is for Three - Knights of Old

Except one is anything but a knight and the other is a lowly man at arms!

I've a whole bunch of medieval figure-photos still in Picasa from a photo-shoot I did back in 2011/2012, and this was one of them; three 'misc.' figures who didn't fit into anything else.

From the left we have . . .

• ·         Evil Guy de Whatsit (see Blog passim) from Britains with his locating-studs removed, he stands quite well and looks the part! 54mm

• ·         A white-metal 're-sub' freebie originally in kit-form, from one of the glossies, I don't subscribe any more, to either of them, just grab a butcher's in WHSmith occasionally and purchase if there's anything useful in there. There never is these days, just endless poured-metal, painted well, but stylistically, in a mile-long factory in China!

I painted him in a flat style which has left the sword-cuts on his shield a bit cartoony and the base is becoming a disaster, I tried a herbal tea-bag for 'autumn' scatter material, but it's worn off round the edges and the glue has whitened, so, along with his too-pink cheeks he now looks like he's struggling in the winter snow . . . hardly Acre in the summer sun huh? Yes - I know it gets cold in the dessert, but I didn't intend it to be night-time either! 58mm

• ·         An unmarked 60mm copy of a 40/70mm Elastolin 'gunner' from the catapult in hard polystyrene. Probably from Hong Kong, but the lack of a mark and the material suggest he could be French, Spanish or even further afield?

C is for Cross...of the Crusaders

Or B is for Box-ticker...using 'crusader' in a post title probably gets me on a Jihadi death-list somewhere! Nothing exiting, interesting or rare here today, just getting them in the tag-list - Timpo, Crusaders, polyethylene, swoppets, 54mm...job done!

First version; I prefer them to the second type, contrary - I'd agree - but that's the cost of having nostalgia for a mistress! The poses are a bit more wooden than the second type, but at least they look like they're wearing chain-mail unlike their battle-casualty replacements who...

...were clearly coated in polished steel-wire! They are the better poses, but they just leave me colder...sorry, 2nd type crusader fans!

Comparison between the two, and the various shield designs, the method of creating the arm-straps out of the rear of the red-cross became cleaner with each generation of design.

They both had mounted versions on standard Timpo horses, with the hook-over caparison. That's it - Timpo, Crusaders, polyethylene, Swoppets, 54mm...job done!

L is for Livonians Laid-out on the Lake

Just as the Americans obsess about the Alamo, Custer's last stand, Pearl Harbour and Iwo Jima, the French;  Jena, Camarón, Bir Hakeim and Diên Biên Phu, the British; Agincourt, Crecy, Trafalgar, Waterloo, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Rourke's Drift, Gallipoli, Dunkirk, Dieppe, D-Day, Arnhem, the Falklands (we obsess a lot don't we!) et al. The Russians have their favourite bits of history for making toys of...

We looked at the Revolution and Chapi's chaps the other day, here is another recurring theme in toy soldiers of the Soviet Era: The Battle of Lake Peipus, and the hero of the hour Alexander Nevsky.

Hero if you are an Eastern-orthodox Russian that is; I look to the Crusader types (silver/green below) as the 'good guys' but to a patriotic Russian, the figures in the pointed ('turkic') helmets (gold/red below) are the good guys!

Before anyone bursts a blood-vessel: they're toys, I'm generalising, and I don't care who celebrates what, or why! Except...Custer got his, well and truly!

10-piece mould tools - one for each side, both with three mounted 'knights' and seven foot soldiery - with the figures joined together by short sections of runner or frame ('sprue'), the actual sprue entering from one end. These came in  polythene bags that were missing their header cards and in such a state they went the way of all flesh a long time ago.

However; I believe it represents a later issue, as there's a certain laziness involved in leaving the separating to the customer, and modern commercialism (in all its forms) seems to be about a gradual reduction in quality/service over time!

Close-ups of both sides of each row of both sets...that's it really, nothing I can add here...if you've followed the link you know as much about the battle as I do, if you're a student of uniforms you know more about Teuton/Livonian and Turkic/Slavic armour than I do, so, just pictures of the frames!

I also have a few loose ones, the green are a part set of the Northern Crusaders, the red being a set of Nevsky's Novgorod forces. The box seems to be correct, it has a standard Soviet-era checkers/QA-label stuck on the back, but it came with incomplete forces from both sides, so I've made-up a full set with a loose figure (the archer is a pinkish batch) assuming the greens had been stuffed in there (the lid sat high) when their own box ceased to be? I'm assuming this is the earlier issue?

C is for Crusadeing for Cherilea

I know I've said before I like the gangly 60mm Cherilea Swoppets, and thought I'd have a look at the whole lot, which taken from my collection is er...not a lot! However, if you like the look of these and don't yet subscribe to Plastic Warrior, you could cross the editor's palm with a small donation and start collecting the back-issues with Matt Thier's Cherilea swoppets articles.

So - my favourites; I have quite a few of these as I tend to keep buying them (in fact there's a whole bag of bits off-camera),  when I see them and Mike Melnyk is to be thanked for a few others. I love the colours, the toy-like quality, the wild thrusting poses, the big 'wooden' shields. the whole package.

We looked at a rather nice mounted figure Here a while ago.

Crusaders where also made in 60 and 54mm and I have a whole one...of each! I think the shield may be from a 60mm figure, but the only one I have won't take it as his hands are welded together above his head!

 

I can never remember if these are Essem or Ellem (or something else?), I'm pretty sure it's Ellem, so have tagged the photo 'Essem'! . They were made in Hong Kong for Cherilea toward the end, and can be differentiated from the more common copies of Timpo knights and crusaders by the larger oblong-bases and painted leg-mail. Also they have 'Cherilea' faces, while other HK piracies have the full-face helmets of the standard Timpo (mid-production years) knights/medievals, in various plug-on, primary colours.