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.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

A is for King Authur Pendragon of 'The Round-Tabled'

Arthur's knights were almost certainly dressed as late Romans, so labelling a bag of Roman cavalry as being so is not as far fetched as it might have seemed to a 1960's war-gamer, as the seminal works on such matters and the preliminary articles in the modelling press hadn't been published at the time these were sent to adorn the 'dollar-trees' and racks of the West's newsagents, corner shops and dime-stores.

However neither the eponymous King Arthur nor his father - Uther Pendragon - could be seen as the model for the spelling! Nor can one ignore the fact that these are High-Empire, not late 400AD's.

A bagged set as it arrived home with the weeks shopping - if you were lucky. The poses are the same as Giant, but the quality is much poorer and the colour palette is again nothing like a similar sample of Giant originals...and Giant would never give you this many figures in one 'retail unit'!

Close up of the figures and horse, this is the horse I call 'Rim-Saddle', die to the fact that in re-cutting the mould to clean-up after a poor pantographing/copying from the same size, a raised edge as been introduced to the outer edge of the saddle, saddle-cloth and other detailing.

This example is Rim-Saddle type four, but I'll go into the types in the same detail as I looked at the mini-trucks after we've seen most of the horse types, as it would be too confusing to try explaining them as we went along without the ability to see them all together, and then look back at the separate posts - such as this one.

The 'palette' of colours - much glossier/shinier than Giant and predominately a dark pastel pink, heliotrope pink and army green with a smattering of primary's and a deep purple...

Smo-----oke on'the War--t--'er;...A Fyiee'yer In The Skyiee!

It should - however - be noted that all the mounted HK Romans are direct descendants of the Giant ones, and it's only horse type or colours that set them apart, the odd positions of the leg-mounted locating-studs are always slavishly where the Giant ones are found and of the same design, unlike the many Cowboy and Indian sets we'll be looking at.

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