CMV is for Curious Multiple Verisimilitudes

I suggested, perhaps a tad facetiously, at the start of the month that the gods were smiling on Small Scale World as the year began, and that was before a certain parcel arrived from Hobbiton! Not only did the arrival of that parcel confirm the largess of the amassed deities, but at the same time what had been one of the 'co-incidences' became a weird triple!

Normally this would go on the Khaki Infantry page, but as there's more of a story to tell and as it's a while since we touched on CMV here, I thought I'd blog this here and tweak the images for the KI page another day.

The string of connections began when Chris Smith sent me these shots, ostensibly for the KI page, as 'just' three more CMV's, early in the New Year and while I was yet to catch-up with all the emails and such like. One-each taken from Britains Herald, Crescent and Lone Star sculpts with a nice background made from plastic flat or semi-flat trees from three, four; maybe five companies.

Less than 48-hours later, Brian Berke sent me another CMV shot of his sample of four ex-Britains Herald, three ex-Crescent and the same Lone Star sculpt, unpainted (there were paint remains on two of Chris's) and in (or 'photographing in'; see close-ups - below - for truer colours) a bright apple-green - above with the Crescent original 'Berserker' for size.

Brian also sent a couple of marking shots, one of which seemed to show a clear CNV, now my original manuscript notes describe them as 'CM/CMV, see also ABC and HK' which was how we looked at them in three adjacent posts ten-odd years ago, so I asked Brian if he could shoot the bases of a couple of others to confirm it wasn't just a squashed 'M', which he kindly did.

The upshot of which was that we got an MV as well as a clear shot of several CMV's leading to the conclusion that the N is an N! Now it's obvious that the M has been lost under the rough-machining round the edge of the base and a look at some CM's will probably reveal similar marks where the V should be (not the M-in-a-C's of the original posts though - they may be someone else!), while the M and N punches sit together in the little metal box the engineer carries them around in so it's easy to see how the other 'mistake' could have been made.

Note how these have photographed in a range of shades not hinted at in the group shot, this happens sometimes with plastics, there are different colours of Airfix 1:32nd scale US Infantry (to the eye) but trying to show it with flash-photography is bloody hard!

Close-up's; we've looked at similar errors here, Kong Hong is another, along with mirrored letters when the wrong set of punches is used; inverted or back-to-front letters are another fault you often find with these cheapies, and there's nothing terribly exciting about it all, but if you only find one and it's a first for your collection; the thing to bear in mind is that the manuscript note now reads 'CM/CMV/CNV/MV....'!

By this time I had let both contributors know of the synergy of their two submissions, and Chris (correctly guessing the make-up of Brian's sample) sent this as a follow-up - the same eight poses (upper shot) in a similar green but these are unmarked, the lower shot compares the three CMV's with their pose-counterparts, and it's a pretty sure bet they are pantographed sub-piracies being both slightly smaller, and slightly 'blobbier'.

Thanks to both Chris and Brian for what morphed into an interesting look at some Hong Kong rack-toy stuff, which I could have saved for RT Month; but with the collection here now, there shouldn't be a problem filling August!

And today's title? I not sure it actually makes sense, but it looked good, sounds 'clever' and sort of gets the point across!!

B is for Blame Chris Smith!

And thank him . . . he adds quickly! Because I tend to load these a day or two ahead, there should be some posts pre-loaded here, but there aren't, because I got a great big pile of plunder parcel from Chris Smith yesterday (Monday) and spent the evening sorting it after I got home, sooo . . . no editing anything else!

Therefore the final part of the Khaki Infantry series is on hold until Wednesday (to publish Thursday), it's weird but things are piling-up at the moment and stuff scheduled for the next day is getting bumped-back, and things which should have published ages ago are still in the ever lengthening queue - I still have three Toy Fair reports; I think!

Not only that but I have several eMails to answer so I can't even do a couple of rush jobs now! However . . .

. . . as I mentioned the other day, Chris had already eMailed some stuff for the Khaki Infantry page, I added some comparisons as I went along, over the last few days, and there was a nice, damaged white plastic FG Taylor figure in the box of treasures, so I'll throw them up (yesterday) on the Khaki Infantry Page, and your mission for today - should you chose to accept it - is to bomb-up, suit-up, fly to Schwienf... . . . no, sorry, different reality, is to reacquaint yourselves with that page, very much a team effort now with contributions from six at least eight or nine, maybe ten people.

Hopefully, there will be Cherilea's 54mm dancing loons and 60-mil bean-poles here tomorrow, probably with the show dates for the next week, and I may post something here later today, if I have time. I was hoping to make this the first 90-post month, that won't happen now, Friday may be a bit sparse as well - I'm not around Thursday - but 80's just doable? Won't beat January!!

H is for Hong Kong, Part 1 - Overview and 'Past the Post'

Note; In the next three posts making this set of articles HK (italisised) refers to a specific company and not my usuall short-form for 'Hong Kong'.

Following on from posts above and the prolific riff-offery of Hong Kong, particularly in the late 1960's and 1070's, here is a quick three-part'er on the sort of products resulting from a bit of piracy of the British producers of larger-scale figures.

Top is a comparison between the ACW figures of CMV and HK (see part three - below). The main image shows from top left to bottom right; two colour variants of the Britains Herald, one UK (black with brown base) ethylene figure the other a Hong Kong vinyl (grey with green base), a Paramount with hollow base and a marked 'HONG KONG' figure (see below).

The second row starts with a HK copy, then three unknown British copies (could be either/or all or none of; Kentoys/Speedwell/Trojan/VP) while the last row is all CMV.

Note that one of the British rip-offs has no hat, while the Paramount is a very different sculpt.

The unknown Hong Kong figure marked neatly on the edge of a quite deep base, with the number '634' on the opposite rim.

Past the Post went with copies of the Monograme GI's (another of the most copied/pirated/licenced sets of figures ever) and an assortment of Indians/Native Americans, all just over 50mm. There were double-decked boxed sets as well and I have eBay pictures of Cowboy sets in the archive.

H is for Hong Kong, Part 3 - CM, CMV, HK

Again in this last group there are similarities and differences that may or may not indicate links?

Three cowboys from 'CM' which I suspect is the same company as CMV, with a close-up of the base marking; an M contained withing a larger C.

CMV copies of the Britains Herald American Civil War figures, Marx Pirates and more Britains Cowboys, again with a base-mark close-up. The pirates don't have the release-pin holes the other two examples do.

HK copies of Timpo 8th Army along with Britains American Civil War figures and Cowboys. A comparison with a Timpo original radio operator reveals how much smaller these copies of copies ended up!

The way the HK is placed within the circle could link it to CM, but the use of a circle in trademarks is so common that it isn't much of a link.