L is for Lots of London Loot - Sandown February - Other Figures

The final post in this sequence is the rest of the figures, I think we've caught-up with 'London Loot' too, but there will be some 'H is for . . . s' to come, with more Toy- and Gift Fair revues to intersperse with them! And Easter's coming, and there's other stuff in the queue, and, and, I seem to be in a productive phase!

 

A couple of hollow-cast WWI French (Britains?), although they went to war in 1940 with pretty-much the same stuff, just in khaki! Both from Adrian's pound-tray, with the little unknown tin-plate howitzer/gun from his five-quid box, of such gems! It probably fired little wooden balls or dowels?

 

Two post-Giant on the left and a Quaker mounted Gladiator on the right, square-up for a bit of argie-bargie, at the feet of Cherilea's Sphinx. I was so pleased with the Sphinx purchase, I got it out to show a mate, and he pulled the same one out of his pocket! I think we'd both bought them from the same seller!

 

Late Blue Box (polyethylene) Britains copies on the left, Blue Box for Triang-Hornby (polystyrene) on the right, also squaring-up for what looks like it will be a fairly uneven fight, so unfair! With an explosion between them, which I think is a modern re-mould of the old Lineol shell-burst?

 

Early Westair ECW type. In this packageing they predate Kinder by several, if not many years, the full story will be on the 'Mocherette' page, whenever I get round to it!

 

These are nice! Two of Charles C. Stadden's war-gaming figures, around 35mm, home painted in a glossy, toy-soldier style, I spent some time googling Nappie's marshals, before switching to 'Russians', with no more success, but other uniforms I found, suggested they were more likely to be Russians (1812) than French, but then I tried 'Prussians' and found images of Frederick the Great (not Blucher), which looked like the chap on the right, so we go back a ways, to the 7YW and all those successions, and find the chap on the left is probably Hans Joachim von Zieten? Seen here as a flat, the blue on the Stadden being a little too pale, while 'Old Fritz' should have a silver breast-plate with those shoulder straps!

 

Clockwise from the greeney; who is a1990's Lucky Bag piracy of Marx's Pecos Bill, and a Kinder piracy of Lone Star's 'Metallion', Pat Masterton, who's full sized version was seen entering the stash, courtesy of Chris Smith last August!

 

A Hong Kong copy of, or 'after' Crescent (I think), in the style of Blue Box, but not one of theirs, a Kinder knight, from the two-part horses, these are nearly always found with their weapons broken these days, very brittle shafts, so a good find, another of the Morestone Stagecoach drivers, and, in the centre, the old 1960's Lucky Bag Indian in gold 'styrene.

 

This is Thomas, but much mucked-about with, painted and with a replacement set of handle-bars, which are attached with a lump of god-knows-what, it could be play-doh! So, again, at some point in the future, I think I'll try it in the ultrasonic cleaner, and see what that leaves me to work with? Pretty-sure I have a good one anyway, so I can afford to 'try something' and see!

 

Adrian found a stash of Hong Kong farm figures while sorting his stock (he is semi-retiring as I write), and passed them to my stash, and while the hope is to attribute a fair few of these to makers and/or named-sets, one day, this isn't that day! So it's just eye candy for now.

 

I have tons of this, lots of it from Chris, Peter, Trevor &etc, tubbed (large scale) or bagged (smallies) by pose, and most of these will be duplicates, but you can see the many variations between them means a few will be the first sample.

 

Strangely, various makers (or issuers) used the same colour schemes - blue/white, red/blue or red/yellow, which I suspect is because lots of smaller makers (sub-pirates, all of them!) in the blocks of the Kowloon Walled City slum (demolished in the 1990's), were being employed to produce all the farm and zoo stuff for repeat orders, for the pocket-money/rack-toy jobbers of the west, a similar situation with all the sub-Giant Wild West, and various generations of 'Army Men'?

 

Differentials include size, base shape/type, base marks, holes or pin-release marks and plastic colour, and they are all copies of other people's sculpts, with the obvious exception of the New Ray 'Country Life' chap holding the lamb-poodle-piglet hybrid! He comes in different colourways too.

 

Again clockwise from the far-left, we have an Airfix motorcycle rider, of whom I still need a few for my fleet of machines, I'll leave the paint (chocolate brown, on chocolate brown?) for now, after the lesson with the bikes! Next to him is a construction-worker/driver, and I think he may be French? He's a hard polystyrene, and well detailed, so I don't think he's Hong Kong, and he may be in a vehicle catalogue somewhere in the archive?

 

The robber is Lledo, the race-horse and jockey will probably be from a board-game, while the seated figure would appear to be from a model railway line/range, but I don't recognise the figure, or the charcoal styrene under the paint?

N is for New Name in the Tag List!

Carrington's the Jewellers of Regent Street no less! Taken from the Illustrated London News, May 1986 'Number' as posh people title their periodicals! A sliver centre-piece, for dining tables or sideboards, you can have him guarding the cheese board and grapes, or staring-down some of your dinner-guests!

 

The obvious question being, is it a Stadden piece? The horse looks a little too smooth in my humble opinion, but the figure has some of the sharpness of folds one expects from the master, and sometimes 'figure chaps' will work with an 'animal chap' (or chapess), as they often specialise in one form of physiognomy? Looks to be about four-inches in scale/size, but he could be as much as six? I'd paint him as a Horse Guard!

Minimodels is also for Almark!

I got a bit shirty a while ago and chucked this first-image up elsewhere, with a 'Sigh', after I had posted one lot (Minimodels) and someone (who clearly couldn't see his nose in front of his face) started lecturing me on how they were the other lot (Almark). Then, even as he'd been corrected, a couple of others' made the same mistake on that and another post, or thread, or whatever you have on Faceplant!

 

Now, don't get me wrong, people already know I'm prickly, or if they haven't learned that, they may have a surprise coming at some point in the future, especially if they cross me, but I don't get this almost teenage attitude among new collectors to open their mouths before they've even read what's in front of them; we're taking grown men in their forties here . . . late forties and fifties mind, not kids. 

 

It's great that there are a lot of new people in the hobby, that's obvious, and it proves the naysayers wrong, with their regular moan of 'Our hobby's dying' . . . Incidentally, everyone keeps saying the Metal hobby is dying, but actually even tatty hollow-cast seems to retain high values on evilBay?

 

And when watching this phenomena I am reminded that it is some miracle my father didn't murder me when I was a teenager - although he almost did the day I broke the 'unbreakable' fork; descending on me from the tractor-cab like a Ring-Wraith! But forks aside, I did ask an inordinate number of stupid questions.

 

I would literally think of something a bit dimwitted, and before I'd given it a moment's thought, ask the obvious! Dad was very good, he'd fix me with his look for such occasions and say "Think about it?", I'd realise I'd asked another dumb question, give it a moment's thought and go "Oh yeah! It is" or whatever!

 

It is similar with some new collectors, they don't bother to learn from the websites or magazine, but rather assume from half-understood bits, or ask about stuff which has been done to death elsewhere as if no one's ever covered it!

 

I'm probably being unfair, but then that's me, and when you post Almark and someone tells you they are Minimodels, or when you post Minimodels and someone else tells you they are Almark I think you're entitled to get a bit excised! Equally, I was polite there, but this is here!

And also frustrating is that it IS already on the blog, we've covered both makes over the years and the difference between them, I seem to recall with help from others on the German sets, but we're going to go over it all again, now, with the Japanese! But all the salient points in this post are already on the blog!

 

Five poses here, all Minimodels, we know they are Minimodels because the first image says so! No . . . because they are painted (a tad garishly) and pre-assembled with helmets in a different colour (and type) of plastic.

 

Minimodels was a toy plant in Havent, hampshire, a satellite of the Portsmouth & Southhampton conurbation, they were part of the Triang-Mettoy [Lines] group, and were set up mainly to produce Scalextric, the slot-racing system, after a move from London.

I shot the kneeling guy again, so there's only six more poses here. The figures were designed by Charles Stadden, or Chas' C Stadden, who did a lot of work for the Havent factory, producing original figures for Waddington's, Dinky (a Corgi-Mettoy rival bought from Meccano upon their demise*) and the most famous generation of Subbuteo footballers, among others. The officer is damaged and bayonets go missing too easily!

 

*An irony there is that Corgi continued to source their die-cast range's accessory figures in Hong Kong!

The Japanese on the Minimodels flyer; they were supposed to get a machine-gun team (like the Germans), but to be honest, I'm not sure it ever happened, I've never seen one, and it wasn't on the flyer, as the other 'support equipments' were - the US got a pack-mule for a Mortar vignette, seen here passim.

Minimodels got twelve poses from ten sculpts, by varying the arms on the bent-leg prone chap (crawling or firing both on the right here) and the spread-leg standing pose (advancing/thrusting or standing firing). The crawling pose is very good, with the hand correctly holding the forward sling-swivel, to keep the muzzle out of the dirt.

At some point, Almark Publishing contracted the figures as unpainted kits, getting Stadden to design some additional figures/accessories in metal, seen here before too. Boxed on the runner, with a packet of bases and simple artwork doubling as a painting guide, you get the contents of four tools.

 

Almark's eventual A-Z entry will make for interesting reading as they were attempting world domination at that point, it seemed, with ranges of books, pamphlets, periodicals, AFV modelling guides, a wide range of waterslide transfers for Aircraft and Armour kits, sticky-vinyl and licky-paper flags and a short tie-in with Bellona vac-forms, if memory serves.*

 

Add these plastic figure sets and the metal kits, and for a short while it looked like they were going places, but it didn't last long, and after 12 or 14 issues of their own modelling magazine (up against Military Modelling, Battle and Airfix Magazine) they faded away.

*Memory may not be serving here; the Bellona thing is a Micro-mould/Armtech tie-in I think, but I'm not in a position to go and check right now!

The instruction sheet, while mentioning that they are made in England, and designed by a 'master sculptor' doesn't actually claim them as Almark, or credit Lines/Minimodels. At the same time there were hyping the 1:76 set to the nines in the modelling press (with the inference they were 'Almark's'), but most of them had previously appeared in the Tri-Ang 'Battle Game', although a set of support weapons was added to the oeuvre - in plastic. Again, all previously on the Blog.

What you get in the pack; the seated figure will go with the MG, so I must have just not encountered one? And while there is a limited scope for 'multipose' beyonmd the two pairs Minimodels had already arrived at, they go very well with the eponymous Airfix set, and I dare say you could throw some Tamiya or Esci-Italeri parts in for good measure!

 

The big difference, beyond the lack of paint, is that the headdresses, are here run in the same colour polystyrene 'kit plastic' as the figures' runners, rather than the softer polyethylene in a contrasting colour of the Minimodels issues - which were by way of counter-top pick-boxes.

Matching-up between the two, this is a new sample I was quite pleased to acquire, until I remembered (well, discovered on the Blog, looking for something else) I'd Blogged them quite early (2011) having found them in the 'big purchase'. That sample wasn't complete either, but between the two, I have now got everything except the machine-gun . . . help me out here, have you seen one?

To get them out of Picasa! The same recent (last summer?) purchase also contained a couple of Americans (of which I am very short, except for the accessories; where I have both vignettes) and a handful of Germans (of which I think I may have a few somewhere, along with the machine-gun on its little wire legs), all Minimodels, not Almark!

It's a minor oddity - worth mentioning - that the 54mm range never got British troops, while the 1:76th scale/20mm set never got the US or Japanese, but did get some metal Germans, again sculpted by Stadden. Again, all on the Blog already.

" An' 'Eres ouwer Graham with a quickh remindah!"

TITM is for Toys in the Media - Soldiers

Being a round-up of toy soldiers in advertising and the wider world which I've been stuffing in the Toys in the Media folder for a while now, both modern stuff and some vintage bits.

This is a book I found on Amazon looking for something else, I rarely read novels (other than sci-fi) so it didn't interest me particularly, not that that doesn't . . . what I mean is; it's here for the cover not the contents which may be very good, but I don't care/didn't bother to find out! Modern 'army-man' pose, sinisterly blured, off-centre and allowing the shadow to do all the talking - good stuff!

Someone in Eastern Europe (?) is commando-bombing street signs with army-men, purpose unknown (road-sign sentries?), but it must be fun looking for them if you know it's going-on in your locale!

Another book cover, this one seems to show old Stadden designs for . . . Tradition? Old Guard? Probably from the 85mm or 120mm ranges? These have been painted, but silver, chromium-plated or polished pewter versions of many pieces exist. Again; the book and its contents are of no consequence to me.

This lady has a credit attached to 'Indigo' which means little, I think she was found on Twisted Sifter or Dangerous Minds, or off the back of a link from one of them? Modern Airfix copy (Afrika Korps officer/Rommel figure) parachute-toy converted to an earring! Although "converted" is a bit highfalutin' for cutting the strings and adding a wire-loop!

A well known (in its day) advertising campaign for White Horse Whiskey included this image, in various crops, which ran in the early 1970's in the Sunday newspaper colour-supplement magazines and on street hoardings I think.

I assume the figures will be something common (and relatively cheap) such as Minifigs (Miniature Figurines) but could be home-cast or something earlier like Alberken, while the farmhouse looks like, but isn't the Airfix 'Waterloo Farmhouse', I thought it was, but close-ups reveal enough differences to rule out the plastic kit. The descriptions and sketches of the time are many and enough to build similar farmhouses!

This is an icing plaque from crafter Yvette Mayorga and is all icing, but in a frame, not on a cake! Not sure if it's an army-man or a cowboy, but again a modern Hong Kong/China figure has been skillfully modelled.

The first series of Blackadder (The Black Adder) was the least celebrated, yet set-up all the tropes for the future works and is probably my favourite after the trenches of the last full-run. In one episode Richard IV (Brian Blessed) is war gaming 'diplomacy' with one of his lieutenants, using large (Papier-mâché, plaster?) figures on the floor, I took a few stills last time I watched it.

Then I thought where are The Avengers stills I took, only to remember I posted them ages ago!

W is for Wild West . . . Checkers!

This is really an addendum to a post published here ten years ago! A better look at one of the three games mentioned on that occasion, by two brand marks (Triang and Omnia), using the Minimodels Wild West figures, originally sculpted by Charles Stadden and manufactured at Minimodels' Havant factory on the South coast.

I'm not sure if Triang's game should be quite as sun-yellowed as this example, it seems a little too subdued for attraction on a shelf, and with some water damage, may also be suffering from non-art-room sun damage too! They don't turn-up on evilBay that often but when they do the sky is bluer!

Quality Assurance Inspection; the production values of putting this together must have be enormous, bigger people; rivals, like Waddington's here and Milton Bradley in the 'States had been throwing everything in placky-bags set in 'styrene trays, for a while by the time this hit the shops, and pairing-up all those figures and setting them in three different, die-cut holding devices must have taken someone forever, even once the operator was practiced.

Almost certainly done by women, possibly out-workers, but I think you'd need to do this in-house with stillage-bins of draughtsmen, bins of figures and the quite huge box - I couldn't scan the board as it's over A3 on a side and the box is bigger! Plus; all that was after they had all been run in one of two colours of polymer and hand painted with between three and five colours!

A reminder of the four figure poses, where these differ over the half-dozen other iterations of the figures (2 other games, window box, cake-decoration bags, shop-stock counter boxes etc...) is that they have added studs which connect with a hole in the draughtsman, the fit is tight and the figures are a frangible polystyrene, so damage would have occurred from first play on Christmas Day!

They are lovely figures, but that frangibility means finding them intact is hard, the six-shooter being the one most likely to survive, the tomahawk being the least likely to be found still attached!

A is for Answer . . . from the Antipodes!

I may have mentioned a parcel from Mr. Sibbald down there in New Zealand? He actually sent four 'things' to the blog, three of which will be Blogged over the next week or two, and while the other things involved multiples of figures; the fourth 'thing' was this single figure, but how useful he turned-out to be:

He's pink . . . he must be Pink!

It's the missing colour from the unknown board-game set I couldn't find in the recent past despite trying various search terms on both Google and feebleBay. But as soon as I saw it (and I may have posited pink as one of the possible colours of the missing figure) I knew where to look.

Not only did the pink give it away, a quick look at the other's revealed the red, blue and brown to look confirmatory familiar, and I eMailed Glenn the same day to say I was sure they came from the Minimodels plant in Havent, as they match some of the figures from the 'Cops and Robbers' Sweeny-branded and Geronimo's Treasure games.

Sir Geldoff of Boomtown auditions for Boyzone!

So it was straight to Boardgamegeek, for searches of Berwick, Condor, Omnia, Tri-Ang, and err . . . the other one . . . Ariel! Nothing! Not a sausage, definitely not a guitarist! So I went to feebleBay and tried Pop Band, Pop Star, Rock Band and Rock Star, Band, Guitar Player and Guitarist (including all the usual Board Game, Vintage, Old, Plastic and Toy Figure prefixes or suffixes). . . some results were too long to be faffed-with, others drew a blank.

I was getting worried; I'd promised Glenn that by the time he read my eMail - which I'd sent in what was the middle of the night down there - I'd know the name of the game and it was beginning to look like I'd drawn a blank . . . again!

"One more note of Tar-rar-rah-boom-di-ay

and you'll be an ex-guitarist mate!"

But discovering in the course of these searches that Waddington's carried versions of some of the games carried by the other companies above - presumably as Waddington's bought them out - and remembering that Waddington's ended-up with the Subbuteo system also linked to Havent through the supply of the Stadden-designed figures, I thought I'd try Waddington's as a search subject.

I tried Waddington's Rock . . . nothing, Waddington's Star (as in rock or pop-star) . . . still nothing, finally Waddington's Pop (obvious; but it took me five or ten minutes to try it!) and BINGO! Two, near-mint, for sale as of last Friday;

Mike Reid's Pop Quiz, 60mm, polystyrene, six board-game pieces, Minimodels for Waddington's, probably, also, a Stadden sculpt?

I don't know, but suspect it might have been sold under other names/titles in other places where Waddington's operated (Oz, NZ, South Africa?) as Mike Reid wouldn't have been known outside the UK, being a British radio DJ!

Anyway; mystery solved . . . thanks to- and thanks; Glenn!

A is for Archive - Minimodels 'Scale figures'

It's funny, they thought to correct me on two 80-odd years old Spanish rubber figures last Christmas, yet seem to know nothing about anything, especially space figures! That was priceless the other day, they couldn't have got it more wrong between them if they'd tried, but then - by making it up as they go along - they are trying to get it wrong, comedy cretins and too funny, just too funny, he's got a little black box with his brain in it!!!

LP are not especially 'rare' and have been much covered here and elsewhere.

You don't know Co-Ma's Selenites yet?

They are not Thomas or Poplar; Thomas spacemen with bases are piracies.

Poplar were a Thomas offshoot.

Solpa are Greek not French - But then Schilling are American not German!

Amusing, yet pathetic - I mean it's painful to watch as you hear the gears clunking. If you're going to sit in my dust copying my recent output, at least try to get it right! Then the next day the idiot lectures the knowledgeable Frenchie and we get 'everybodyelsesstuff' Because Stadsstuff hasn't got the rightstuff and it takes ten of them and FacePlant.TwitSpacestuff to get it right!

Anyway, thought I'd put this up here as the Cock-whacking Monkey Lizard got a bit confused about these in his attempts to 'elucidate the Vichy' a year or so ago, despite it mostly being here at Small Scale World for some years!

If they are painted -

They are from Minimodels, of Havent in Hampshire (posh name for-/posh end of- Greater Portsmouth!), another of the many subsidiary works of Lines Bro's Tri-Ang/Metoy/Playcraft. Paint is minimal with gloss weapons and matt flesh and uniform/equipment-highlights. We have looked at some of the better pieces before here and they were sold from counter-display pick-boxes

 If they are unpainted -

They are Almark who offered them as boxed sets, on the runners as multi-pose type construction kits for home assembly, a few years after the Minimodels issues, in part to tie-in with their WWII publications. Almark didn't offer all the 'extras', but went on to commission some further sculpts from the original artist Charles C Stadden, which were issued as metal kits, we have looked at some of them too!

Minimodels were founded in 1947 by Bertram Francis (a former toolmaker) in London.

Minimodels moved to a purpose built factory in Havent between 1954 and 1956.

Minimodels were sold (by choice) to Lines in 1958.

Minimodels were the manufacturer of Scale Figures.

Minimodels were the marketer of Scale Figures.

Minimodels were a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lines and/or a administered as a branch of Triang-Mettoy-Playcraft.

Scale Figures was a sub-brand/brand-mark of Minimodels and sister-brand to Scalextric.

Minimodels were the contract-manufacturer for Almark.

Almark were the 'Jobber'.

Almark Model Products was a sub-brand/brand-mark of Almark and sister-brand to Almarks Transfers.

There is no, and never has been an Alamark Minimodels.

They are all dead! . . . Except Pedigree - strangely; they seem to be abeyance, possibly by/for the Hornby Group, the Pedigree name being held by a shell-office in Margate?

S is for Substitutes!

Continuing with both Subbuteo and football, this was an interesting happen-stance, or 'curio' I picked-up the other day . . . well, the end of April . . . another Charity shop purchase, it appeared to be one of the new sets and was only a few quid, I de-labelled it; shot the box . . .

. . . and opened it to find the teams were all hard plastic! Someone had bought the set for the new players, chucked two old teams (of the newer variety) in the blister tray and sent it off to charity - otherwise 'mint'!

No matter, it gives us a chance to look at a whole set in close-up, and - as a collector - has given me two teams and the new-style/designs of pitch- matt and goals.

As you can see it's not that it's an older pre-flexible figure set, it's definitely meant to be the newer type, although it's dated 2012 so they've been out for a while without my noticing.

The players are also interesting in that while the older versions (all generations) were basically one chap, there are now variations with long hair and short hair in black brown and blond.

The new nets are a bit chunkier than the old ones (and harder to store!), but there's not much in it and there's probably a reason for the two 'ears'. While the raised bar between the ears helps get the ball out of the back of the net without moving everything around!

A little vignette with red having a shot on an open goal! "Cum'on Everton; what are you playing at? Mark your man!" Straight out of the box - hours of fun!

News, Views Etc . . . Subbuteo in the National Daily's

You probably caught this news item a couple of three weeks ago or so, it made several papers and the broadcast media, but as we had Subbuteo earlier today; now's the time to box-tick the press-release here!

You can read the story - as original - by clicking on the image, but I've converted it into text below for ease:-

Net gains: first

all- ­female

Subbuteo set

By Josie Clarke

The first all-female Subbuteo set

has been launched to reflect the

rapid growth of women’s football

in the-UK.

   The FA and the game’s maker,

Hasbro, revealed the limited

edition version of the table football

game ahead of the SSE Women’s

FA Cup final at Wembley on

Saturday with the figures in

the colours of finalists Arsenal

and Chelsea.

  The FA said the new version

supported its objective to

tackle barriers in the women’s

game. The set includes 22 players

plus substitutes, with their

own characteristics.

  It is not available to buy but it

can be won via FA social channels

in the coming months.

  Hasbro and the FA said that

they were “exploring future

opportunities” to bring out a

commercially available women’s

football set.

Unless you're some sexist old dinosaur it's gott'a be a good-news story, and it'll be twice the number of teams to collect for the Subbuteo completists, and then there's the possibility of fielding a women's team against a men's team and beating them - heh-heh! Or converting them to face-off against Nottingham's Space Marines; Ripley style auto-loaders anyone?!

It should be pointed out that I can't find the competition (to link to) on the FA site, anyone know where it is?

O is for Officials

F is for Follow-up - Subbuteo, but it was so long ago I did the Subbuteo 'round-up' posts it might as well have its own title.

Today we're looking primarily at the new set of match officials from the resurrected Hasbro Subbuteo (carried in the UK by Paul Lamond Games), actually called Official Referees Set, you get four completely new sculpts and a spare ball (you can't have too many spare balls; they tend to leave the table easily and don't support the weight of a human in shoes terribly well!), firmly embedded in a vac-form tray and further ensconced in a window-box - so you can see what you're getting.

Compared to the older (Charles Stadden) sculpts, these new ones are slightly smoother, and although not the soft, pliable polymer of the new players, are in what seems to be a pretty survivable hard plastic like polypropylene? Also where the older sets gave you two identical linesmen, this new set has opposite flags, so whichever side you place them, the 'wind' will be true across, or on both sides of the pitch!

The digital substitution board is a nice touch and as far as I know the first time he's been seen on the Subbuteo sidelines? I see a market for a set of stickers . . . or it'll be continual bad luck for Number 2!

While the cultural changes in football over the years are evident in the Ref ' who used to be firmly pointing to the penalty spot - no questions asked - but is now waving in the hope that whichever miscreant primadonna it is, will realise he's not getting away with it!

While I had them out I sorted a few others that have come in since the last set of posts and found that there are now three generations of policemen to join the three generations of St. John's Ambulance we looked at previously.

With the first type slotting into players bases (with all those pitch invasions in the 1970's they needed to move round the pitch quickly!), then a similarly based figure to the last set. I only have the one - so far, so don't know how many there were in the set, but it looks like the 1^st type were converted to integral-bases and all three issues seem to be by the hand of Stadden?

Buckshee shot on the right of the rest of the set, but I don't know what I was doing there or why I cut his hat off?

Finally, while I'm comparing; the old pitch versus the new pitch, I know some old-school die-hards have some harsh-words for the new pitch elsewhere online, but then the old school always hate change in any field of endevor!

The fact is - it is first and foremost a plaything for kids - it will follow industry trends and changes in technology as time passes and the new nylon pitch holds its shape better than the old felt one which would warp over time. I do think it could be a lighter green . . . and it (the new one) will be very useful for 'charging-up' balloons and sticking them to the ceiling at parties . . . every cloud!