Geoff Pollock Conversions And African Archers

  Geoff Pollock was a regular at Adelaide markets where he sold various items including toy soldiers, many being clever conversions of cheap plastic figures. He obviously enjoyed his hobby but he didn't get around to getting married or having children. On my regular visits to Adelaide I often visited his inside permanent Pooraka Market stall and had a chat about toy soldiers and his latest conversions. He was a friendly bloke. However, he didn't visit  doctors and he died of a mystery illness 15 years ago.                                                                           
Geoff's conversions still turn up and among the ones I have are a nice Egyptian chariot with crew men converted from A Call To Arms Zulus. The others I obtained recently from fellow collector and friend, Bob, and consist of ten African Hong Kong archers. Geoff gave these a basic paint job but did a nice conversion of the 'officer', giving him a spear made from a Call to Arms pike and a rectangular cut shield.

I already had my own African archers from this set. They came in brown plastic and were between 54mm and 60 mm. The ones I painted I did a few modifications, adding pipe cleaner plumes to some. The ones waving axes had some weapons changed to DSG swords which I added after the figures were painted so I wouldn't be worrying about paint shedding.

I now have a nice sized African archer unit suitable for anything from ancient to modern.

BELOW: The ones with green flocked bases were done by Geoff and the ones with sand coloured bases and eyes are the ones I had already done.

                                    The figure far right front has a deformed, overly large chest, something I like about cheap plastics - you never know when you will get a mutation!

                                The figure I converted with plume I also added an animal skin head cloth.