St. Cyr Cadets by Britains???????

You never know what will turn up at the Plastic Warrior Show, a curious item that caught my attention was this Britains "Eyes Right" series box of French St. Cyr Cadets.

The wording and style of print have been lifted from original Britains packaging but the box colour and the way it opens by lifting the cellophane fronted lid are all wrong.

Inside the box there is a printed insert which looks to be a French Chateau, the figures look to me to be copies of Starlux and they are held in place by wings cut into the insert.  The figures are a good 60mm high and made in hard plastic, painted to a good standard.

Underneath the box the wording is once again copied from original Britains packaging.

So what is it - a rare Britains set made in France or a fake made to catch the unsuspecting collector?

The answer is neither it was made in Poland, and the quality looks very good, I think any serious Britains or Starlux collector (which I am not) should include something like this in their collection for a bit of fun.

New Armies in Plastic at Plastic Warrior Show - May 2012

Showcased at the Plastic Warior Show were some new items from Armies in Plastic, artillery for the American Revolution and War of 1812 ranges.  The figures are not new but the guns are, a howitzer and a mortar plus a bonus - there was some spare room on the mould so they have made a small "dragon head" barrel which can be fixed to either of these guns to turn them into Chinese Boxer Rebellion cannon. 

Also on show were the Camel Corps artillery with figures in red plastic, I was just about to embark on the conversion of some camel borne artillery for my Funny Little Wars Turkish army so these will save me the bother.  In the bottom right of the picture you can also just aboout make out the new trench sections AIP plan to produce, they are made of foam and come in modular form so you can make a line of trenches as long as you like.

And here's the man who makes them, Tony Ciccorello (hope I've spelt that right) of Armies in Plastic.

Seen at the Plastic Warrior Show - May 2012

Now that I feel suitably recovered from the exertions of the day here are a few of the photos I took at the Plastic Warrior Show last weekend:

This rather fine mounted Saracen made in France by JIM was on the stall of Belgian collector Daniel Lepers, shame about the horse's tail though.

The joy of attending a show is the plethora of boxes to rummage through.

Even bigger boxes, plenty of raw materiel for collectors building armies or making conversions.

And then some good stuff

At the start of the show these shelves were full, you can see from the gaps that by the time I got my camera out nearly half had been sold by collector Joe Bellis.  Click on the picture to enlarge then click again and you will see:

Top row - bartender and gambler with derringer pistol from the Cherilea Western Bar Brawl set.

Second row - Large scale (65/70mm) Lone Star Indians, these have swoppet heads, looks like the whole set here.

Third row - The Cherilea Great Helm Knight, originally made in hollow cast lead as part of the Baronial Series, the mould for the horse was modified for the plastic version to make it a rearing rather than charging pose, also I have never seen the plastic version with the knights helm so I suspect they dispensed with it.

Fourth row - Four Monarch Highlanders (two each with double handed sword and claymore and buckler shield) which I mentioned recently in the post about Monarch Conquistadors, a Speedwell FFL, a Trojan WW2 Australian and at the end a Britains ECW roundhead.

Fifth row - A couple of the rare Crescent 65mm Mohicans, a Cherilea Davy Crockett, seven Timpo Cossacks - very hard to find these undamaged, Charbens FFL officer and another of the Trojan Australians.

Bottom row - Crescent mounted Arabs, FFL and First World War British Cavalry, the foot figures are two Cherilea Nubians, a prone Japanese machine gunner from Trojan (hard to see), a very rare Cherilea Indian firing a bow - previously made in hollow cast lead and finally a Cherilea Davy Crockett.

New Replicants figures at the Plastic Warrior Show - May 2012

Well that's the Plastic Warrior Show over for another year, did I buy very much?  No not really, there was plenty of stuff there but I had made out a shopping list (nothing special - mostly stuff for conversions) and for once was determined not to deviate from it.........Big Mistake, note to self next year don't make list.

The thing about this show is that it's always been rather more of a social event than anything else and I invariably find mysself spending most of my time talking to people rather than buying.  Over the next few days I'll post up more entries about the show but to kick off there were some new figures from Replicants:

Bonnie Prince Charlie who led the Jacobite Rising of 1745.

It has become a bit of a tradition now that Replicants launch new products either at the London PW show or the Chicago show, this year there were two personality figures for the Jacobite Rising series.

The Duke of Cumberland, son of George 11 and victor at the Battle of Culloden.

Below are the English infantry led by the Duke of Cumberland, these were launched at the PW Show in 2011 but the picture I took at that time was pretty poor quality so here is a better one...........

.......and here is the man who makes them, Peter Cole sculpts the figures (same size, just like they used to in the 1960's rather than 3X the size of the final product like they do today) and makes the moulds himself.

Peter Cole of Replicants at the 27th Plasstic Warrior Show - 5th May 2012

Plastic Warrior Show - 5th May 2012.

The 27th Annual Plastic Warrior show will be held on 5th May 2012 at:

The Queen Charlotte Hall, Richmond Adult and Community College, Parkshot, Richmond, TW9 2RE (the usual venue)

Doors open 11.00

The Plastic Warrior anniversary souvenir figures.

Can we really have been doing this for 27 years?  I have attended every one and remember the first one like it was only yesterday, it was so bad that there very nearly wasn't a second one.  The Show was the brainchild of Peter Evans who booked the hall, arranged tables, did the advertising and roped in the dealers, his Mum made sandwiches and tea for the refreshment stall. 

There were only four dealers but they were big names on the London collectors scene at the time: Seamus Wade, Peter Flataus, Bill Kingsman and Roy Lemon, they all normally dealt in old lead but acquired some plastics when they bought up collections, it was good of them to take the time out to support us.  They sold the plastics very cheap and by the end Seamus was begging people to take them for nothing so he didn't have to carry anything home.

Several of us put on displays of our collections, a big feature of the early PW shows were wargames and "the fight".  Ross Perry (whose Dad had written two books on 54mm wargaming) put on a massive medieval castle siege game, it looked magnificent but took so long to set up there was no time to play it.  "The fight" was a reenactment, usually some sort of duel or personal combat. in this first one Peter and a chap called Bob Chitson dressed up in chainmail and helmets then went at each other with broadswords.  Their ferocity was actually quite frightening to watch, when Peter bludgeoned Bob around the head we all just stared on in a terrified mesmeric awe.......... an ambulance was called and Bob was taken to hospital with concussion.

My contribution was to man the door and take the entry fees, not too onerous a task as only four people turned up, I had taken my new rather enthusiastic young girlfriend along with me for the day, she dumped me shortly after this.  One of the exhibitors had brought along models which had featured in Don Featherstone's book "Skirmish Wargames" there was an amazing two storey western saloon, a pirate ship and a Peninsular War Spanish town, at the end of the show he didn't want to take them home, Ross took the first two but couldn't squeeze the town into his car and convinced me to take it rather than see it go on a skip. 

When the curtain came down we divied up Peter's Mum's unsold sandwiches and headed out into the dank North London dusk only to find that half the cars had been vandalised.

It had not been a success, we all agreed that, but Peter assured us this always happened with a first show and next year would be better and, of course, he was right.  With a highly sceptical team in tow Peter went ahead and arranged the second show, he managed to get some prime time coverage on Danny Baker's TV show and PW has never looked back.

The Figures

By the tenth show we had already imported remoulds of Marx figures from Mexico and Dulcop's from Italy so had some feel for the collectors retail market.  Peter Cole had been making figures in resin for some time but the process was slow and the materials made them too costly, he thought he had found a way to make short runs of plastic figures that would be reasonably affordable and we agreed to back him.  As an experiment we commisioned him to make a figure to celbrate the 10th PW show.  Herald had made a set of four infantrymen standing at attenetion, a highlander in glengary, sikh, guardsman and modern infantry in beret, we felt there should also have been a boer war infantryman in khaki and putees so that's what we went for.  The experiment worked, in fact it was a great success and from the techniques learned the firm of Replicants was born, we were so excited about it none of us noticed that we'd made the figure with his rifle in the wrong hand.

By the time the 20th show came around Peter Cole's firm Replicants was firmly established and didn't need us to sponsor a figure but he made one anyway, a war correspondent from the American Civil War, quite fitting really.  Last year Ron Barzo came over from the US and brought with him a supply of his own souvenier figure, a lady pirate brandishing a cutlass and quite fetching she looks too!  Will there be more such figures to follow?  Who knows, my next post will be after the show so we'll see what turns up.