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.

Monday, February 27, 2012

M is for Marching...up and down the SQUAY'ER!

Took these at Sandown the other day, rather outside my budget, but nice figures and to be able to compare them was a bit of a treat, thanks to Adrian of Mercator again, link to right, he still has a few of these.

I think these are Luftwaffe on the left and regular Wehrmacht (1935-1945) infantry on the right with a Swiss soldier to the left of the lower image. After the war Hausser were allowed to produce figures of other armies only for a while, and when they were allowed to produce native troops they were restricted to ceremonial and marching figures only, regular units only, no NASDP, SS, SA, SD or other Nazi units or uniforms and none of the personality figures that had been such a feature of the pre-war catalogues.

There was also a guy with a full pack (top left) and a paint variation of the marching figure without pack (bottom right) along with a cleaner Swiss soldier in parade uniform. As Elastolin were limited to these figure types only there must be a wide range of variations to find?

2 comments:

Brian Carrick said...

Hi Hugh, I think the figures with the reddish rifles have been repainted by a collector, the bushy eyebrows and blobby eyes look like they've been painted on by brush whereas the originals would have been drawn on by pen, also they've omitted to paint in the hair line at the back of the helmet which was a regular feature even on the old composition figures. This level of mind numbing detail suggests that I don't have enough to do in my life at the moment!

Hugh Walter said...

It's funny you should say that as there is a strange 'shadow' of hairline on one of the figures which is not caused by the flash, so he may well have been repainted, in fact I think only two (one German and one Swiss have the blob of hair...