Lone Star Sailors and Others
These were figures I did not have as a child but acquired second hand later. As with other Lone Star figures I like their chunkiness and also their animation. The sailors look like they mean business, with their aggressive and determined poses. Judging by their equipment they look like WW2 era. They are most likely intended as British but could serve for other navies. Toyway also made remoulds. The following pictures are of originals and remoulds. Some of the originals I have repainted in their original colours. Others, along with remoulds I have painted in more detail, with facial features and tattoos.
The sailor with sack is a remould of either Charbens or Timpo. The smaller figure I have no idea of its origin.
Below: The figure with binoculars is Lone Star but the other is another Charbens. It looks remarkably like Winston Churchill. The figure was brittle and the leg and scabbard broken. I Araldited the figure back together, coated it in PVA and painted it in the original colours.
Hi James, the sailor with kit bag was originally made by Timpo as part of a set of railway station passengers, the figure was reproduced in plastic in recent years by Replicants by permission of Roy Selwyn Smith who sculpted the original. The smaller figure is a petty officer from a short set of 40/45mm sailors by GEMODELS, they were made as cake decorations.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, Brian
There's a great picture of the matelot swinging his grappling hook on page 35 of Frank E Perry's "A first book of Wargaming." The photo has the caption "You can make your own boats out of wood and cardboard. This is a river gunboat."
ReplyDeleteAlso in the photo is an interesting officer, in tropical whites, with a map case held by his left hand and forearm. I was told 10 years ago this is a figure from an obscure French manufacturer. It's not from Starlux. I had a 25mm Hong Kong knock-off in a Christmas cracker in the 1970s, along with a series of knock-off Britains Herald figures with EM2s, and another range of 1960s soldiers. I saw this latter range last month, but cannot relocate them.
Those GE Models figures (Officer; ratings: four marching, three at ease, two at attention; and five boy cadets) look great. I would have loved to have had them as a kid.
My sailors were thin on the ground, yet I somehow obtained the Charbens officer in white plastic, albeit with no ratings to command!
The officer in the duffel coat is a great pose.
Thanks Keith. That photo in the Perry book is one of my favourites too. Perry's two wargaming books have immense charm in the black and white photos of old toy soldiers, metal and plastic as well as the text.
DeleteI may have been given a bum steer. The officer does look like a Crescent figure, from their 8th Army range, Officer with binoculars (K13)
ReplyDeleteI think the figure was a crescent knock-off, as the other soldiers were copies of their British infantry range, most notably K4 Kneeling with Bren Gun & K5 Radioman.
ReplyDeleteI had grown up, mid to late 1970s, with Airfix soldiers as the standard, and knock-off copies from Hong Kong. The US Infantry, German Infantry, Eighth Army & Afrika Korps were good quality sculpts, and the standard Hong Kong fare too.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the figures on the gunboat in the book, there was a certain mystery, having not grown up with Crescent figures. Then, seeing several new designs as Hong Kong knock offs, despite the quality of the sculpt, in either the original or the copy, falling short of the quality associated with Airfix, these mystery figures grabbed my attention.
Nothing is as desirable as the unobtainable, or the forbidden.
Other than the Timpo blister packs - and Timpo had gone into receivership at the time the book was published - I do think that the toy soldier manufacturers missed a trick in not manufacturing sailors and/or a boarding party back in the 1970s.