Lone Star Royal Marines
The Lone Star Marines have long fascinated me; they are in full dress but prepared for combat. Most seem to have Thompson sub machine guns or perhaps assault rifles - I'm not sure which.
I did not have these as a child but a friend of mine, Stewy or Stuart Middleness did. Stewy and I shared the same classes at primary school. We spent a lot of time shooting, with elastic bands, flies on the classroom windows at Coaesville Primary School. We also spent a great deal of time playing ink blot fights on our paper blotters. We used to draw our monsters soldiers, planes and tanks and 'shoot' them with our fountain pens by shaking ink blots on to them. Needless to say we did not learn a lot from the teacher. Perhaps, fortunately, we were not in the same class at secondary school.
Stewy liked to torment his baby brother, smash glass bottles on the road and commit genocide against hordes of tadpoles; he collected taddies and kept them in crowded icecream containers filled with water. They were 'fed' dirt. Interpreting their deaths charitably would say they were unintentional.
I could almost forgive the taddy apocalypse for one compensating feature; Stewy had toy soldiers and they were different from mine. He had a large number of swoppet Timpo cowboys and also quite a few Lone Star Royal Marines. These formed the two armies. I did not know about Royal Marines so I thought they were old fashioned Bobbies.
Our battles were fought on his concrete front verandah and casualties were inflicted with elastic bands and toy guns that fired projectiles.
I lost contact with Stewy some time in my teens but I have a dim memory of being told that he had met some kind of tragic death, probably involving a car. I often wondered what happened to his toy soldiers.
In later life I acquired Royal Marines, usually in battered condition. I used putty to patch them up and repainted them in original colors. I wish Toy Way had done re-issues of them because they would be wonderful for 20th century imagi-nations.
The advancing figure was incorrectly repaired with a spiked helmet when it should have been a ball.
I did not have these as a child but a friend of mine, Stewy or Stuart Middleness did. Stewy and I shared the same classes at primary school. We spent a lot of time shooting, with elastic bands, flies on the classroom windows at Coaesville Primary School. We also spent a great deal of time playing ink blot fights on our paper blotters. We used to draw our monsters soldiers, planes and tanks and 'shoot' them with our fountain pens by shaking ink blots on to them. Needless to say we did not learn a lot from the teacher. Perhaps, fortunately, we were not in the same class at secondary school.
Stewy liked to torment his baby brother, smash glass bottles on the road and commit genocide against hordes of tadpoles; he collected taddies and kept them in crowded icecream containers filled with water. They were 'fed' dirt. Interpreting their deaths charitably would say they were unintentional.
I could almost forgive the taddy apocalypse for one compensating feature; Stewy had toy soldiers and they were different from mine. He had a large number of swoppet Timpo cowboys and also quite a few Lone Star Royal Marines. These formed the two armies. I did not know about Royal Marines so I thought they were old fashioned Bobbies.
Our battles were fought on his concrete front verandah and casualties were inflicted with elastic bands and toy guns that fired projectiles.
I lost contact with Stewy some time in my teens but I have a dim memory of being told that he had met some kind of tragic death, probably involving a car. I often wondered what happened to his toy soldiers.
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