About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

S is for Spencer Smith Part 1; Figures

Some time ago we had a few of these figures sent in to the 'What the #%&*' section of One Inch Warrior (see Plastic Warrior link on right), and in a follow up article by Stuart Asquith used some of mine to help illustrate it. I photographed them - on that occasion - with Tudor Rose vehicles in support, and liked the combination so much I've returned to it here. We'll look at the Spencer Smith Miniatures first;

A bunch of advancing poses and the bazooka team, they are mostly a generic 'Combat Infantry' in style, somewhere between the Second World War and the mid-1960's, and you can see the Holger Eriksson ancestry straight away. The khaki-green ones are the most common, with sand coming a close second, the loader is just a colour variant produced when the green is run into an injector previously running the primer-brown used by a lot of the AWI/7YW figures. The black figures are the least common, being - I suspect - a late batch, while the grey are usually re-moulds from Harlow, especially if they are all shiny and clean!

Mortar and MG with crew and a couple of fighting poses. The MG is clearly modelled on something like the French Hotchkiss while the SMG's look like the Yugoslavian M56, a copy of the German MP40 with 'banana magazine, so a right old mix...but more on origins below!.

The two artillery gunners, one has a small round ideal for 25lbr's while the other guy is packing some heavy shite. Both guns here are Hong Kong products. Like all Spencer Smith, these were designed primarily for war gaming, accuracy of detail and/or moulding was never an issue.

I am not a war-gamer, I used to fight micro-tanks with a schoolmate 33 years ago, but not now, however I have all the stuff needed in 'The Collection', so thought it'd be a bit of a hoot to set up a little scenario from the Terrance Wise (I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy!!) school of how to do it! here the boys are rushing across a road 'dans la bocage', as they slowly encircle a small village.

While in this shot the mortar line provides suppressive fire-support with 2" 'personal' and 3" 'Infantry' mortars.

[Can any of the metal collectors tell me who or what should be attached to the plug on the log in the background?]

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