Plastic Warrior flyer leaflet tucked in the box of 130 odd plastic figures to repair
I haven’t made it to the Plastic Warrior Show in London yet (the next one is Saturday 11th May 2019). I hope all those who travel to this annual event have a great social time and a good rummage through the boxes and trays of plastic figures. http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com
Speedwell WW2 German Afrika Korps figures
Instead I have been rummaging through a fabulous box of 130 broken or damaged plastic figures bought from Barrie (“Redhalliwell” on eBay) for £3 to £4. Strangely no one else bid. That’s about 3p a figure – sent straight to my door!
Barrie mentioned interestingly that 2019 “is our 32nd Show. When we first started it was mainly collectors who came but now we get a lot of 1/32nd war gamers coming as there are cheap figures to be had.” (2019 Show details at end of post).
Some interesting hat conversions to Kepis or cap comforters. UNA (left) Herald copy (right)Another view of these interesting cap conversions – Korean War? American Civil War?
These playworn battle scarred veterans deserve some care and attention. Some Plastic figures from the 1950s and 1960s are now more brittle than others and these clearly have seen better days. My Broken Britain’s metal hollowcast figures in some ways will outlive these.
Starlux standard bearerA dance troupe or 60mm 7th or Union Cavalry? (6 C20 figures, one C21) Crescent figuresCrescent knights and a fine unmarked Robin Hood figure. Two Crescent M6 M2 (right)Crescent knights (far left and right), Britain’s Deetail 2 and 3, Timpo fourth.Three unmarked but fine tricorne redcoatsA slinky Hong Kong copy of a Herald hula dancer?Airfix Waterloo figures and a fine ‘premuim type’ musketeer who would make a fine female pirate! Timpo and other fallen desert warriors.Mechanics, milkmaid and a ‘golden balls’ footballerUnmarked Beefeater / Yeoman of the GuardOversize 60mm Crescent Indians 1 and 3, and a Lone Star 54mm Indian for scale.Three Crescent C2 lasso cowboys and a Kellogg’s conversion, looking almost pirate like. Lone Star (fifth along)Attack of the 60mm Tall Mexican! Crescent C25 Mexican and Britain’s Herald (left) and Lone Star (right)
A few hours later the harsh sunlight was fading and photography was easier.
Lone Star Harvey Paratroops and Infantry except for a larger Crescent P6 figure running (back right) and Crescent K2 flame thrower (front right)A fine Lone Star Harvey Series paratroop Officer with pistol, who could be a great space police figure too.Bashed and battered Britains and Herald American IndiansThree fine charging Confederate butternuts to repaired. No maker’s name shown.
A mixed and bashed band to paint and repair. Lone Star Harvey Series and Kellogg’sSome figures were more bashed than others but still useful figures for repair. Headless Lone Star guardsman next to Herald Scotsman (right)Mostly Britain’s Herald Life Guard and Household CavalryDamaged Herald British Infantry and Hong Kong copies.More damaged Herald British infantry and copy (fourth) with damaged Bullpup rifles
More damaged 1950s and 1960s khaki infantry, one Crescent figure with a melted base and a Crescent mortar man.
Airfix British Eighth Army and left unmarked “desert rat”Feisty Timpo swoppet style figures. The damaged Digger in bush hat has a very old Donald Featherstone look to his face.Battle scarred veteran Airfix US Infantry to repair.Airfix and other random WW2 Infantry – large Crescent K32 radiomanA fine horse with a broken back leg to repair.
These should be 130 useful figures for the conversion and repair box.
Interestingly my usual repair glue – fast setting standard Superglue cyanoacrylate – does not seem to work on these plastics. Any better ideas?
I know there is a special Plastics Superglue with an activator.
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From a previous post comment by snaves?
Reminder: the PLASTIC WARRIOR figure show
Saturday 11 May 2019
The Harlequin Suite
The Winning Post Inn
Chertsey Road
Whitton
TW2 6LS
60+ tables packed with figures, mainly reasonably priced and LOTS of “junk” boxes
Further details tel: 01483 722 778
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on Pound Store Plastic Warriors, 30 March 2019.
Being some illustrations of ‘The Dumb Soldier’ poem by Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS) from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), as featured in our recent garden games post:
I was fascinated by the discovery by Tony (of the interesting Tin Soldiering On blog) of this type of crude wartime or postwar hollowcast figure, the plastic pound store warriors of their day, buried in the garden of the house he grew up in whilst digging the garden
He is about 54mm (2″) scale, I’m not sure where he has come from, my parents moved into the house in about 1946 shortly after it was built and I have lived here all my life and can’t remember ever owning him as a child so he is a bit of a mystery, but he will stand guard on my painting tray from now on … it ties in with the age of the house which was built just after the war, my mother and father moved in on his demob in 1946 I think . Tony, Tin Soldiering On blog
So I was curious to see the same type of figure unearthed and turn up for sale on an online site and bought this “Dumb soldier” to go with several others that have turned up in joblots.
54mm-ish WW2 or post war lead hollow cast, discovered in Bristol by Dave Hough, now in my collection. The pound store plastics of their day. Looks like it’s been buried a while ….
They are very similar in style to the crude moulded figures that I produced from vintage metal moulds.
First is a three page spread by British illustrator Hilda Boswell (1903 – 1976) in watercolours, from her illustrated version of a Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1963. The first two pages are a double page spread, broken down to page by page to see more details. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Boswell
Archaeologists of the future might see this toy soldier burial as some kind of strange ritual practice. (In my experience anything Archaeologists do not understand is linked to strange ‘ritual’ practice).
Her “Dumb Soldier” looks much like the 1960s Herald Plastic Guardsman I grew up with, first introduced in the early 1950s as plastics steadily took over from lead figures for children. So this Herald figure could easily have been the model.
One of my Britain’s Herald Guardsman (1950s-1970s)
The other illustration in my collection is from the late Brian Wildsmith (1930-2016), a well-known British illustrator.
I was amazed and pleased to see that his 1960s illustrated version of A Child’s Garden of Verses is back / still in print (Blackwells, 2017). So you can own a copy too!
‘The Dumb Soldier’ poem from my old bashed family copy of RLS Child’s Garden of Verses with illustration by the late Brian Wildsmith.
Lost or deliberately buried in the garden?
My late Dad as a wartime child was given some ‘lost’ metal figures including a coronation coach dredged up from his father’s employer’s garden pond, presumably unwanted by the previous, possibly careless child owners. Long lost again many years beforei was born, I often thought of these treasures whilst launching amphibious assaults across our garden pond and then sometimes having to root around in the pond bottom mud for the heavier casualties.
I lost plenty enough small Airfix figures in the pile of builders sand we called a sandpit. Digging one into the lawn, however good his trench or fire pit, would have led to pretty quick decapitation by 1970s hovermower.
B.P.S BlogPostscript
I was amazed and pleased to see that Wildsmith’s 1960s illustrated version of A Child’s Garden of Verses is back / still in print (Blackwells, 2017). So you can own a copy too!
