ITMA is for It's That Man Again!

The hype has been growing for a week or two now, with the BBC's Radio4 and World Service both covering a certain new movie more than once in the last few days, it's all about some Corsican chap 'Blownapart', from the Wellingtonian period, who did something notable, or infamous? And the talkie-format, moving-picture presentation opens worldwide, today!

He's been modelled a few times, indeed we've seen him here before, so often, he has his own Tag (yeap, it hurt!). And here we have a large fairing in the centre, flanked by two substantial home-painted model soldiers on plinths, in the 80mm bracket.

 

Then the smaller front row, around 54/60mm scale and from the left . . . 'Metallion' of the younger artilleryman, two French-made Jim, a JSB from Belgium, Hong Kong's Blue Box (courtesy of Chris Smith's forthcoming donation-plunder posts), another French plastic (Acedo maybe, or Cofalu/x, Guillbert/Clairet, someone like that?) and a faux-antiqued tourist piece in slush-cast base-metal.

 

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On the subject of the title, for foreign readers; ITMA was the moral-boosting comedy sketch-show on BBC Radio from 1939-49. We lived, for a while, next-door to Clarence Wright, who had retired to Alderney, he played several of the well known characters, among whom were the Commercial Traveller and the Man from the Ministry, and I had the pleasure of chatting to him on several occasions, when he would tell the most irascible stories, which I couldn't possibly repeat here, even if I could recall them, but I remember him as a thoroughly nice man.

T is for Two - Machine Gunners

As I may have intimated, I acquired a few machine-gunners the other day, and while most of them will just be filtered into the collection for future use, there were one or two which are worth a closer look as stand-alone figures.

This is the Belgian firm of JSB, you may remember I had a very poor figure from them which I seemed to save with a thick coat of plumber's sealant a few years ago (he was still fine and stable last time I looked), he was also a pretty realistic figure, not something which can be claimed for this chap, who's channeling American 'dimestore' sculpts from the likes of Barkley or Manoil; single-highhandedly engaging aircraft (or cliff-top dwellers) with a 40mm pom-pom!

His barrel was very bent (further up, like a priapic flaking flak gun!), but I mannaged to bend it the other way with the hot-water system, although I was very careful and had several incremental goes, as I do't know what polymer this is, some phenol, formaldehyde or cellulose-based material I suspect? Proper toy soldier!

As is this fellow, a seven-part assembly of blow-moulded and vac-formed polystyrene (or celluloid, but I think the former in this case) sheet from Japan, he has moving arms and may have had a moving head once; it's now glued, fixed to the front. I don't recognise the logo-mark, which seems to be a single China-Japan-Korea compatible ideograph character ' 金 ' ?

But what a fantastic survivor of 1950's novelty tat. And; out of six successful bids (and one bidding war) to get most of them (one lot was lost to someone else), not to mention some mail-fail, probably my favourite out of the whole lot!

News, Views Etc...Err; news, views and etcetera!

Easing off on the Blog for a few days - weather's too nice to stay out of the garden. I know I still have to do a review of PW162 and with 163 due soon they may end-up together! There will - of course - be a show report forthcoming and a [show] plunder report in the fullness of time, but it's not a race and it's not a competition!

Brian Berke has sent some lovely stuff, from which I have already prepared two articles, with more to follow and some to be filtered-in over the years to come...while I have been sent the best ever picture of Mount Rushmore which I am downloading on this visit and should post next time...

Meanwhile, this JSB figure from Belgium came in at the show, it was in an advanced stage of disintegration, so throwing caution to the wind I brushed the worst of the crystallisation off the surface (which took a bit of paint with it) and coated it with plumber's solvent (actually Polypipe SC125) which is a very fast drying, noxious, clear, spirit-based, low-pressure/contact adhesive (incidentally: ideal for converting PVC figures as it's an instant-weld for things like Micro Machines or Wizards of the Coast figures), the main ingredient for which (if you want to buy it elsewhere in the world) is Bisphenol A-epichlorohydrin epoxy resin (industry number: AV MW<700).

The shot on the left shows the figure after quite rigorous brushing, on the right after a coating of the plumber's sealant; I actually gave the chest several coats to help fill some fine 'drying' cracks which were appearing. He will remain a bit shiny, and only time will tell if the procedure has saved the figure, slowed the death down a bit or totally wreaked it...It's in a polythene click-shut bag and I'll check on it from time to time.

Brian Carrick has a few JSB figures on his older site.

I did the same with a Captain Video robot, which was actually starting to crumble into pale powdery stuff as well as having the cracks developing in his back, but as he was unpainted, I pushed the boat out further with him and coated him in liquid polystyrene cement, let that dry (it restored the colour to some extent), and then gave it a liberal coat of the plumbing goo, I didn't take before shots, but I'll watch both figures with interest.

As a follow-up to the Bendy Toy/Plant-tie thing the other day, here are some actual (1970's vintage) toys, you can see there's no difference between them and the garden centre frogs we looked at in that post passim. The boxer is a design registered in the UK (and a PW show purchase), the Pink Panther I think we've seen before and is credited to United Artists; both made in Hong Kong.

The - unmarked - bear (is it Yogi, or a lookie-likee? Next day...'Smokey the Bear', see comments, thanks Ross!) has been hanging around since the last PW show a year ago and is smaller and of limited articulation, I guess he may have come with some accessories, a chair or [picnic!] bench maybe, to sit in or something like that, his body bends quite well, but the wires don't extend much beyond the shoulders and hips.

While I'm posting follow-ups, here are a few French figures from Cofalux which have come in recently, some may have been in the original posts in March/April (?...below!), but I got the factory painted flamethrower-guy in Twickenham at the weekend, so though it was fun to compare.

The other two are Belgian copies by Soldabar/Plasticom of the same French company's Foreign Legionary figure, we've seen the pose before here, but it's always nice to have a few colour variants!

Mucked-up a photo-session for the Airfix blog, so they can go here...piracy: it's a bad influence!

Finally, for MIB collectors, CTS have a fine group of Britains Deetail boxed samples in stock this week.