Clairet Eskimos at the London Toy Soldier Show

I'm always on the lookout for something unusual when I go to the shows and here is something I was really pleased to find, it's the Clairet Arctic set.  I say Arctic set because it's got Inuit people and Polar Bears but commits the universal sin of including Penguins which are only found in the Antarctic.  Marx, Britains and Timpo all made Polar/Exploration sets but I don't think anything quite compares to Clairet, in fact of all the French manufacturers I rate them the best, being on a par with Elastolin for quality but with the advantage of being 54mm.

I was really taken with the ice flows and the sleighs pulled by reindeer, they're a nice touch to a very original set.

A close up of the figures, note the chap who has caught a fish in his two pronged trident, the one standing beside him with an oar looks as if he's frosted with ice but in fact this is a chemical reaction in the acetate plastic which will degenerate further over time causing crystals to form all over the figure.  There are some other poses which are not included here - two men carrying a polar bear slung from a staff between them and a man with a hunting eagle tethered to a pole. 

Final shot shows the sleigh pulled by huskies which I couldn't get into the main picture, also a better view of the huntsman with rifle who has a dead walrus at his feet

W. Britain new Zulu War unveiled at the London Toy Soldier Show June 2012

Unveiled by W. Britain at the London Toy soldier Show last weekend was this rather dramatic model of a British artillery limber team racing to cut their way through the Zulu hordes and rescue their 7lb gun.  The set has been titled "Desperate Escape"

A nice piece of eye candy which I'm sure will appeal to modern W. Britain collectors but why oh why did they mount it on what looks like a slab of rough cut MDF board?   And having crafted such folly why not extend it to the gun instead of cutting it off at the limber and leaving the gun looking like an after thought from another set?  Having said that I've looked at the set on the W Britain website and the base appears much thinner and extends to include the gun so perhaps this is just a prototype.

Due to be available in September it will be a limited edition of 600 sets and should you choose to order one you will get the grand sum of 1p change from five hundred quid.

Some further posts on the London Show to come when I get time, some nice French plastic and the latest offering from the Skirmish Wargames Group.

Niblett Vintage 20mm - so small and just exquisite

I went along to the London Toy Soldier Show on Saturday and among the sights were these rather lovely 20mm masterpieces by John Niblett, they really are hard to find and in fact these are the first I have ever seen in the flesh.........so to speak.

John Niblett is probably best known for his work on the Airfix HO/OO figures but apart from his own 20mm range shown here he also sculpted 54mm figures for Malleable Mouldings and a range of historical figures in armour under his Modelmakers brand which were sold through the Tower of London. 

Malleable Mouldings are best known for their early plastic figures made from designs by Holger Eriksson at the Treeforest Mouldings works in Wales around 1946 but when this didn't take off they moved to Deal in Kent where they started making metal figures for the collectors market, still using Eriksson designs but now also some by Niblett who was based just up the road in Sidcup.  Their catalogue boasted that they could make figures of any regiment to order and the Christmas 1952 edition of the Illustrated London News carried a full colour article showing 25 of their figures depicting the evolution of the Coldstream Guards from 1650 to 1950.  In 1957 they were still on sale at Hamleys, the famous London toy store, alongside collectors models by Carman, Argosy (whoever they were) and Greenwood.

Niblett was still advertising his design and casting services (now moved to Herne Bay) in Military Modelling magazine up to the end of 1978, there is a picture of the figure of Robert the Bruce that he produced through Modelmakers on my old website (now dormant) HERE

A selection of 20mm Romans, Normans and Medievals, at top right is a 30mm figure (also by Niblett) of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, the bodyguards to the British Monarch.

The picture belies the fact that the foot figures are little bigger than the size of my thumbnail and given that they were originally sold through Hummels of Burlington Arcade (where you can buy all kinds of stuff you never knew you needed at prices that will have you clutching at your chest and gasping for breath), alongside Courtneys and Pings, it does make me wonder if they were ever actually meant to be wargaming figures?   Well Niblett also sold them unpainted and after he died in 1980 they continued to be sold under the Tribute Figures brand, for more detail about Niblett visit the Vintage 20Mil website

The figures were on the table of dealer Adrian Little who trades as Mercator Trading priced at £10 foot and £25 mounted.  Adrian told me that he usually takes Nibletts to the shows in the US, where there is a healthy appetite for them, because they give a good return relative to the weight and room they take up.  A bit like smuggling diamonds then.

In hindsight I should have bought some, well one at least.  Maybe I will, next time. Perhaps.

Ancient Wargame - how does that work then?

Some years ago I came to the conclusion that painting 54mm Napoleonics and ACW for wargaming was a bit like cleaning out the Augean stables, the mountain of plastic never diminished and my hobby had become a chore instead of a pleasure.  To break the cycle I began searching for prepainted figures and bought up a clearance lot of the Timpo Romans made by Toyway (not to be confused with the original Timpo Swoppet Romans which would have required a remortgage on the house), these chaps are made of PVC so the weapons are a bit wangy and they plug in to a truly dreadful base which looks like a big orange dome.  Neither problem is insurmountable, dip the weapons in boiling water then straighten them and run under the cold tap - all sorted.  For the bases I reverted to my old favourite the tu'penny bit, the figures being PVC they stick to metal like barnacles on a boat hull, okay it's a bit of faffing about but it's not as tedious as having to paint 100 figures.

The Toyway/Timpo Romans, well detailed and nicely animated, I think the armour is quite accurate too.

I have never played an ancient wargame (not even with the Airfix figures I had as a lad) and my knowledge of the period extends little further than the Romans/Britons and Greeks/Persians but I have flicked through various Great Battles of ... and Great Commanders of .... type books so I know I am missing a trick and with that in mind I reached for the copy of Xenophon's "The Persian Expedition", which has been yellowing on my bookshelf these past two decades and headed for the local pub.

Britains Trojans, not the nice early Herald series figures but the later Hong Kong versions made of PVC (so I have no qualms about mounting them on new bases).  Will they pass muster as Carthaginians?  They'll have to because I haven't got anything else!

Xenophon's history of the Ten Thousand has provided me numerous scenarios which require few cavalry and no chariots or elephants, which is a good place to start as I only have infantry at the moment.  I have a reasonable number of Britains Trojans which will get the tu'penny treatment and be pressed into service as Carthaginians, supplemented by various African natives as ........ well Africans.

Rules?

I recently happened across some old copies of "The Bulletin" the magazine of the British Model Soldier Society but they were priced ridiculously high so I just bought one issue, July 1956 - the month I was born.  Flicking through I found a set of very basic Ancient/Medieval wargame rules written by a T L Bath, which appeared to be written for 54mm figures.  Enquiries on the Old School Wargames Yahoo Group showed that they were the first known rules written by Tony Bath who had founded the Society of Ancients and they were designed to be played with 30mm flat figures.

to be continued

Vosper MTB102

For the past 12 months, Mrs C and I have been walking the dog for an elderly neighbour who has been unwell, this morning we decided to walk him along the river where we came across this MTB gently bobbing against the quay at Eel Pie Island.

To be precise it's the Vosper Motor Torpedo Boat 102, an experimental craft launched in 1937 and just over a week ago it participated in the Jubilee River Pageant.

When I was a schoolboy I was an avid reader of the Victor comic and one of my favourite series was called "Under Two Flags" (not to be confused with the Foreign Legion novel by Ouida) which was about a Royal Navy squadron consisting of a MTB and a captured German E Boat which constantly surprised and outwitted old Jerry, I've always had a bit of a thing for MTB's since then.

It's always fun to discover something unexpectedly!

What really struck me was how small the torpedo tubes looked, perhaps because it was an experimental craft?