J is for Just Right For Your Pocket!

Have you ever got so tired, yet wired you couldn't even snooze, yeah, well that's me right now, I was doing online training all day, with tests, and my eyelids are hurtin' heavy, but I'm sort of powering through! So, in the hope this will tip me over, sleep wise, here's a quickie before midnight!

This was once full, but pretty-much everyone who wanted one has had one, and there were four left, while the box had sort of had my name on it for a decade prior, so it finally came home with me, back-end of 2021!

 

The Trojan 'common' set of Tiny Trojans, and because I'd shot it a couple of years earlier, I think was the reason for never quite Blogging the whole show-report! Anyways, here's a close-up, to get them in the Tags again.

Three ex-Crescent sculpts and a man appaently firing wiff-waff balls from a double-barelled . . . thingy! That twin-barrelled PIAT-M/G really does look like that!

A is for And so to Bed . . . No! 'London' - A is for And so to London . . .

. . . where we three and thirty, and thirty-three, and more that thirty-more did meet again!

And even some new faces turned-up and a bloody good time was had by all! The weather would have taken some beating (especially after what it gave us today!), the company was fine, the merchandise was piled-high and smelt of old plastic, it had to be the Annual (pandemic's allowing) Plastic Warrior Toy Soldier Show!

Now, I'm not going to bore you with the minutiae; if you were there you know how good it was, if you've been before you have a good idea what you missed, and don't want to be told (it was better - better than ever!), and if you've never been and didn't go, you probably shouldn't be reading this! But one of the features of the show, is the annual release of the latest 'Special Publication'  . . . or even two - in a good year!

Well, this was a vintage year, so we got four! And if you missed them, or the show, or both, I'm here to plug them!

Two volumes on the die-cast accessories that came with or for toy soldiers from the same makers, and the Modern Army Series from Lone Star was one, with all the variations, even the daft blue and chrome ones, a very useful addition to the library.

Crescent was the other maker getting the once over and I must confess I didn't know all the vehicles in the fleet, the M109 for instance, looks excellent, and how many are there in 54mm-compatable, die-cast?

This - however - is essential reading for any British plastics aficionado, it's years since the last black & white version was released, and this all new, all colour edition is a real treat, with lots of new stuff, hard to know where to start, and this is only a quick promo, but yeah . . . if you didn't get one yesterday, you need to get one!

And if the Trojan work is welcome, this in-depth look at BR Moulds is a fantastic volume, some of us suspected it was in the works, the ephemera hinted at in the previous articles we've seen in the magazine clearly pointed at 'more to come' and here it all is, and I mean 'all'; full listings, most known figures, now illustrated with multiple examples, a few unknowns thrown in for good measure, side-by-side comparisons and much conjecture - it is not only a joy of a quick-read, it's genuinely fascinating, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

For all four volumes the contact details are many and available as soon as you've read this;

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PlasticWarrior?fref=ts

Blogger - http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.co.uk/

eMail  - mailto:pw.editor@ntlworld.com

Tel: 01483 722 778

Address;

The Editor

65 Walton Court

Woking

Surrey,

GU21 5EE

UK

 

And they are on Paypal

 

I'll also plug Matt Thier's White Tower Miniatures, Matt was one of the old faces seen yesterday, and he has two catalogues out at the moment;

Last year's Dark Ages catalogue is still available, but it was announced about now I think, back then, so may be in short supply. A very nice range, I follow the Faceplant page and when he posts a bunch en-mass with all the different shields and weapons, they are stunning. There's over 120 figure-castings now, several horses . . . and a bear!

This is  the new for 2022 listing of the Wild West range, and while I'm not a metal guy, I was tempted by some of the many character figures from TV, the movies and real life (each gets a thumbnail biography and either a still of the movie poster, or a picture of the real person), there are also character figures of named Native Americans, a lovely wagon and all the normal stuff.

 

Matt also showed me footage of a range of slot & peg-together building which are on the way, with removable roofs and interior floors etc.

 

Matt is findable here;

https://whitetowerminiatures.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/whitetowerminiatures

 

eMail: matthair7@hotmail.com

 

I also literally ran-into the  proprietor of Soldiers in Silloth as I was taking his flyer from the front table at the show, and promised to plug his toy soldier museum, and as I'm covering everything else (above) here, I'll give you the cover and a bit of blurb and try to do an A-Z entry with a bit more, I'm also going to try and visit this summer as it looks like an excellent day out!

The museum seems to contain all types of toy soldiers including metal and plastic, with cabinets of sample figures alongside vignettes and dioramas, and of course, it's just off the Hadrien's Wall way, so you could include it in a longer walking/camping holiday or make it part of a long-weekend?

Soldiers in Silloth

No.1 Marine Terrace

Criffel Street

Silloth

Cumbria

CA7 4BZ

UK

Tel: 01697 331 246

http://www.soldiersinsilloth.co.uk/

 

**********     ***     *     ***     ********** 

 

And the post's tile? I overslept! Adrian had to ring me from the drive! Doh!

H is for How They Come In - Week 18 - 1 Overview & Army Men

Hot on the heels of Peter's lot (looked-at a couple of days ago) came another parcel, from Chris Smith and it's a cracker, which should have been published yesterday (or weeks ago!) but I was struggling with the Internet, or certain parts of it, yesterday!

I could get on Faceplant with no trouble at all from start-up, Hotmail was intermittent, YouTube was slow but trying to get on mine or any other Blog was not happening, and even getting Google's page up took forever, once I was there I could get to Blogs through their URL, but even then images needed to be reloaded and the blue-circle never stopped? Hay-ho, it's working now (middle of the night by the time I get these loaded!), so, onwards and upwards!

I think I bought my assistant off with some cheesey-dreamies as it was a trouble-free opening and this is a shot of the initial 'excitement sorting', it's just awesome, as every time you remove something, especially the larger pieces, you find half-a-dozen other things underneath, rapidly running out of room, you have to bring some order to the chaos . . .

. . . which is what has happened in this shot; like the last big lot from Chris, I started with thematic piles by subject matter which are;

1.      Trees & plants

2.      Robot 'set'

3.      Weapons, scenics and equipment

4.      Wild West

5.      Sci-fi / Fantasy

6.      Ships & boats

7.      Aircraft

8.      Ceremonial and historical soldiers

9.      Farm & zoo

10.  Ancient & medieval

11.  Prehistoric Hominids

12.  Dinosaurs & Chinasaurs

13.  Flags!

14.  Cartoon / TV/Movie-related

15.  Money box/bank

16.  20th century soldiers / 'Army Men'

17.  Civilians

18.  'Halloween' / Horror

19.  Sports

20.  Vehicles

And we can then meander through some of the piles looking at highlights and with both the above photographs it's a case of 'what can you spot', but we'll be looking at lots of them in close-up, the second biggest was the 'Army Men' pile which as it was closest to me, got shot first!

Again, mid-sort shows piles of like-figures being sorted from the main pile, although unrelated figures may end up in the same pile, this is because when they get further sorted into the main collection similar figures are often together; I know I've mentioned in the past the quandary over whether to sort alphabetically by makers or thematically by subject, it's bit of a hybrid arrangement at the moment!

Final 'exploded view', the blue rifle should have been in pile '3', but fell out of whoever it had got caught-up in as I was sorting them! It looks like a Christmas Cracker (budget range) novelty 'charm'.

Highlights not covered below include the two Aurora kit-figure Russians in shop-window display paint (I think, top right), some Matchbox Mega-Rig and Battle-King figures (centre) and a Corgi pair, various Airfix clones including some more Russians, Toy Story Tim-Mee clones (middle left) and another of those Spetznaz types I got all confused with a while ago, I think this is the other size, but I'll dig them all out and compare before I get it wrong again!

The pale yellow ones (middle top) are a new form or version of Airfix US Para-clones, and as I've now ID'd the third set I did have, I'll do an update on that Airfix page soon . . . ish (I must stop making rash plans as promises!).

Chris has contributed greatly to the parachute toy sub-collection and this lot contained six, the two blow-moulds on the right being different versions of a new (to me) variant, the Tim-Mee copy is possibly a Toy Story thing, but a knock-off I suspect, not a licensed one - which we have seen here. Next to him is a less common version of the smaller ones, while the two Airfix clones weren't duplicates of any I have here, and there are quite a few, but with about eight variants and many colours, there's loads to find!

Colour variations and mould variations of figures we've probably seen before, except the painted chap, who will get a full collage on the Khaki Infantry page, when I do the next update, as he appears to be A) an earlier, unmarked, better-quality version of the 'Empire'-marked one we looked at a while ago (from Adrian Little) with the scalloped-out base and B) possibly British? It's a hard call, the plastic could be HK'ish, or even South American, but it could be British, it's bloody-interesting anyway!

The figure on the left (a non-exact Airfix US Marine clone) is marked Macau which makes it quite unusual, then two larger figures one an HK copy of a US (?) maker and the other 'Rambo' probably Arco, they made the smaller Rambo set (see tag list) with bases, and I think these larger baseless ones were them too - plastic is the same and poses are similar? Finally a really nice, dynamic pose of sniper, who pulls DNA from the Airfix British paratrooper sniper, but is by no means the same.

Not from Chris, but currently on sale under the probably phantom-brand of 'Black Temptation', these hark back to the previous Rambo figure (and the mentioned smaller set) in that one or two of the poses here are taken from there! You get 12, six green and six . . . primrose! There's a bit of Marx and a bit of Bundeswehr in there too!

Back to Chris's donation to the Blog, and saving the best to last; Chris got a nice 'score' of Tiny Trojans, among which was one which hadn't been painted on the base and another which has a pod-foot effect caused by a short-shot on the tool and he kindly sent both to the Blog.

The significance of the unpainted base is there as all my brown weapon and/or black helmeted ones have plain bases, while the pea-green helmeted ones always have painted bases, as did the rest of Chris's substantial find, so it's not that it's an interim or crossover 'version' but rather a mistake!

All superb stuff and I can't thank Chris enough for sending this lot to the Blog, except by sharing it with you, the loyal readers and next-up we'll have the ceremonial/historical types!

T is for Tiny...Tiny Trojan's

The reason I ended up with 7 articles was that I wanted to cover the ‘Tiny Trojan’ figures, but to do that I needed to compare them to their Crescent originals, which lent toward further comparisons with Skybirds and Dinky and so on…
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!

They are however the same size as the small ranges of pre- and post-war figures by Skybirds, Crescent (1:72) and Dinky (nominally; 1:60), and it’s this early inability of the toy industry to standardize a size or range of sizes that leaves us collecting figures that climb in quarter-millimeter increments from less than 15mm to 70mm+

As can be seen in the picture at the bottom right, there were two distinct issues of these figures (Khaki below and a greyish brown – the more common – above), with further ‘collectable’ variants as well, such as the black or unpainted helmets of the former issue.

The Crescent figure with an asterisk seems not to have been issued by Trojan in plastic. The lack of a discernable size difference between the Crescent originals and the Tiny Trojans would suggest that Trojan inherited the moulds for the Crescent range, why they dropped one pose and created 3 new ones may never been known, a guess would be the level of damage to the moulds when Trojan got hold of them and/or a desire to fill gaps in the ‘Infantry section’ with an anti-tank weapon and a machine gun.

All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.

The additional poses (over the Crescent range) in this set are the Bazooka-man; here seemingly based on a pose common to a lot of Eriksson’s kneeling figures (posted the other day in an ACW article), which by the late 1950’s were everywhere in all sizes; and the flailing around/stabbing pose which was common to a lot of larger scale figure sets of the time such as Marx, MPC and so on, indeed it bears a striking resemblance to the stabbing 8th Army pose from Charbens.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.

The other three poses are from the previous metal Crescent range. The fact that the gloss paint on the browner/khaki figures probably pre-dates the matt colours of the other batch, and the fact that the other 4 poses appear in both styles, would point to neither being more or less common that the other, and that larger numbers of ‘Set B’ are just ‘still to be found’; three shop-stock boxes of ‘Set A’ having turned up in the last 12 years - on both sides of the ‘Pond’.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.

Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.

Again, evidence - lack of size difference - points to Trojan (if it is them) getting hold of the moulds originally used for the metal ranges. The better detail on the plastic figures can be explained by the use of a different material in the mould, while the head/hat differences of the mother and daughter (Britains; No.LB/517 Nurse and Child) is easily explained as being due to flash rather than remoulding.