Pirate Ship Play Set – Ahoy!

A rum looking cove … or is that where they are headed? Attractive pirate packaging, cardboard waves, pirate imagery and old printing font. Proper Playset stuff!

I bought a boat.

Or two. Our fifth blogaversary could not pass without something new and joyously plastic!

Living in the West Country or the Southwest U.K., you are never that far from the sea. And what does that mean? Seaside gift shops! Plastic Pirates!

A close up of the contents, still with the fearsome pirate stickers. I removed these carefully and put them away in the bits box.

Close up (below) of its box mounting which is attractive and atmospheric in itself, with something of the toy theatre or theatrical backdrop about it. A touch of Tolkien or fantasy even?

The pirate boat or ship (what is the difference?) looks even better without most of its stickers.

It also comes with two giant pirate figures, around 60mm+, of which more anon.

The inclusion of figures (and out of scale ones) is obviously what makes a pirate ship into a play set.

If I were designing this pirate ship playset, I would turn two oversized figures into 5 or 6 smaller figures of pirate crew, seamen or prisoners including maybe the odd female pirate or pirate treasure chest. Obviously the smaller the figures, the more risk that they will be lost or swallowed. Solution: Best not let children near them and reserve these play sets for adults? 🙂

I quickly tried the ship out for size with a smaller sized crew.

A smaller crew of 15mm Chinese and other Pirate figures (below) …

Slightly larger scale crew (below) – old lead sea captain aloft and pound store plastic c. 32mm conversion figures on the deck.

And slightly in between (below) – 20mm Jacklex Mexicans to hand for scale … the Mexican Navy!

The ship’s figurehead is a delightful oddity, a winged male or female figure,

A curious figurehead of almost modernist or modern art strangeness.

The large scale pirate figures are roughly factory painted. Oddly or unfairly, the balding figure is unarmed, not even a cutlass for sword fights?

Britain’s old and new 54mm figures for size comparison with these larger pirates.

This ship and crew cost the princely sum of £9.99. So I bought two …

Not quite pound store prices. However, making one of these ships would take quite a long time, so this price seems a fair trade.

Pirate ships – an interesting conversion and painting project to convert this into a useful sailing boat or pirate ship for the tabletop for the autumn or winter.

Back in April 2020 I scrap-modelled a small harbour setting for 15-20mm figures https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/28/making-a-martello-tower-from-scrap-fort-crumble/

For Some joblot pirates and redcoats

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/02/what-ive-done-in-april-for-anns-immaterium-paint-all-the-stuff-you-own-challenge/

logposted by Mark Man of TIN! Ahoy! 18 September 2021

There has been much focus on the dangers of Single Use Plastic (SUP) at the seaside, ending up on the beach or in the ocean affecting marine wildlife. Look after your pirate ship to make it RUP – Repeated Use Plastic!

More Washing of The Spears

A right colourful bath tub mix up of 40 to 54mm figures …

Over the last few weeks I have been spending a bit of Christmas money on eBay, picking up the kind of cheap plastic figures you don’t normally see in UK toy stores. A few pounds here and there.

Being either new-ish secondhand or sometimes a whole  chocolate tin of mixed figures, the scrapings of someone else’s toy box with some tantalising glimpses of unusual figures, they all need a good wash before painting. It should remove any grime and mould release chemicals.

With so many figures,  the sink wasn’t an option so the bath tub stood in this time.

Here was the washing up bowl  ‘spa treatment’  I did last time, back in June 2016:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/spa-treatments-for-toy-soldiers/

Drip drying en masse in an old beach or bath toy net …

To dry so many, I rigged up an old beach toy net (commonly used for storing bath toys) and they  all drip dried pretty quickly.

Next job is sorting them all out … an exciting mixture of modern plastic 40 to 54mm soldiers, pirates, redcoats, ninjas, fantasy figures male and female  – and skeletons which sank.

I shall post photos of each group in the next few posts.

Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on 2 February 2018.

 

Hex marks the spot (or six pirates for a pound yo ho)

No toy soldiers in the pound store today. However I found these rough looking characters in a local covered market stall for baking and cake decorations.

I enjoy finding unusual sources of figures like this, adding some variety to the usual figures.

Palm trees £1 each by Flying Tiger, six Cake Dec pirates for a pound (local market)

Hex marks the spot?

Figures are about 50 to 54 mm base to head, marked on the back ‘China’.

They are made in flesh tint hard plastic, crudely but colourfully painted to adorn a pirate cake.

Six colourful pirates for a pound! Proper piratey poses amongst the figures including a pegleg and crutch, parrot on shoulder carrying a treasure chest and another with shovel to bury it.

One has a knife carried in the teeth, keeping hands free for climbing the rigging and there are plenty of cutlasses amongst them. Good Treasure Island material here.

One of them with an oar looks like a girl pirate. They were all mixed in with the usual Cake Dec box full of sports people, so ‘she’ might really be a sporty female rower.

Figures like these can of course be repainted to make bandits, navy crews or other irregular troops.

Some interesting piratey poses to repaint and add to my plastic pirate skirmish gaming box.

The blue coated captain looks like he has a broken sword or pistol.

He was the only of this pose available. Should be an easy repair.

Huzzah for cakes of piratey death! Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yohoho and a bottle of rum … and all that.

Figures repainted this winter ready for more desert island duelling? Sadly the age old family sand pit is no more.

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/duelling-in-the-sandpit-lunge-cut-and-stop-thrust/

Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on Pound Store Plastic Warriors, 7 September 2018

Battle Ground figures

 

Dramatic header artwork, reminiscent of all those WW2 story cartoon booklets  …

An online purchase last year from a vintage ex-shop stock supplier, at first I thought these were 54mm pirate copies. In fact they turned out to be OO/HO.

I was not disappointed as this meant I had some OO/HO copies of the larger Airfix Japanese Infantry to play with, pirated and pantographed down in size from 1:32.

A motley collection of OO/HO copies of 1:32 Airfix copies of Japanese and American Infantry and Matchbox Germans. With extra added flash …

These were pretty ropey, poor quality  copies with extra flash and badly moulded weapons. Perfect for conversion then! Four bags full …

Because of the unusual nature of these Airfix Japanese figures in a small scale,  I think that they are worth trimming free of flash  and painting up as an Imagi-Nations army unit.

Violently coloured and attractive pirate copies.

Hopefully I will be able to create some interesting new OO/HO figures for the American Civil War or for an Imagi-Nations army, such as I have done with the original 1:32 Airfix Japanese Infantry that I have repainted here.

 

My Pippin Fort style Imagi-Nations troop paint conversions of 1:32 Japanese Infantry.

These Pippin fort figures were previously shown at my Man of TIN blog in June 2016 (link below here) and would feature well in the employ of any late 18th or 19th Century  Imagi-Nation:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/pound-store-wars/

 

1:32 Airfix Japanese Infantry officer (copy) repainted and more modern radioman. 

Equally these OO HO Japanese figure copies could be used alongside Airfix Japanese Infantry OO/HO (still in production) to make ACW figures in kepis.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/confused-by-zouaves-some-airfix-acw-paint-conversions/

Another set of figures for winter 2017/ 2018 projects.

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, on his Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog  7 October  2017.

 

 

 

 

 

Pound Store Pirate’s Moll

 

This scary looking female comes in a set of cheap painted pirates often found in toy stores and seaside shops.

She comes with some interesting protection tucked away in her hands behind her!

This female figure could be repainted in a variety of ways to suit different periods from  17th Century pirates to Wild West and even Gothic, fantasy, vampires, steampunk and Sci-Fi scenarios.

Civilian or female figures are often hard to find in pound store plastics.

I have repainted the base colour on her face as she had some strange gothic black eye paint in her factory original paint state.

Posted by Mr. MIN, Man of TIN, September 2016.