Reinforcements Have Arrived - The Final Chapter

 Here's what I've been doing lately. 

  I bought a bunch of toy soldiers off Ebay and got a box full of figures in various sizes, various colours and mostly unknown origin. As in, not only do I not know where they were made but I'm not entirely sure what army they're supposed to be. 

 After sorting them all out - more or less - and taking a quick snapshot of each group (see last 6 posts for more details) I finally got round to laying them all out on my kitchen floor in a grand display. 

 It took quite a long time to set them all out and in the process I strained several muscles  scrabbling about on my knees. Finally I finished. contemplated my work for a minute then took a few pictures.

 And then put them all away again.

 Still one of the more productive things I've done lately. 

After all that, here's some pics. 

That's All Folks. 

Reinforcements Have Arrived Pt 6.

 Or "How I started photographing a box of toy soldiers I got off Ebay and then just when I thought I'd finished, I found another bag with all the odds & sods I couldn't match up"

So here we are. Another installment in a  series that got a bit away from me.  Here we go...

To explain, as I've been going through the haul I kept finding figures that clearly didn't fit the unit I'd dropped them into. So I'd pull the aside and drop them into a separate bag with a vague plan to maybe  sort them properly a bit later. 

Tried that, quickly gave up. 

Have I mentioned that I have about ten bags with soldiers in minutely different shades of green?

Anyway, I got to this final bag of assorted bits and figured I really ought to document them too. 

It also gave me a chance to show you how much variation there can be in size, colour and quality, even when the figure is basically the same guy. 

I tried to play with this pic to emphasise how different the colours might be. Note also that some figures are veritable giants in comparison. 

 All clearly the same squaddie but moulded and remoulded by different firms. 

Spot the figure that was made by Airfix and which are the cheap, generic soldiers.   

 I still need to get the entire box-full out on my kitchen floor and display them en-masse. That's likely to take frigging hours so expect something at the weekend. 

That's All Folks. 

Reinforcements Have Arrived pt 5

 Yes, we're still going through the box of toy soldiers I got in the mail. 
It was a big box. 

If I was smarter, I could probably make clever allusions to how ASSORTED and UNSORTED the consignment was.  Never mind.  Let's get on.

24. Warriors Of The Rising Sun. 

Some...um...assorted thoughts on this unit.

One of the few units that didn't really need a flag as they are recogniseable as belonging

 to a specific army -or a specific army that isn't American, I should say. 

The officers with swords are a bit of a giveaway.

This set may also be where that tiny, one-man mortar pose we keep seeing originally came from.

As far as I know the Japanese were the only combatants to use something like this.

  

Picture sourced from here: https://balagan.info/musing-on-japanese-knee-mortars-in-crossfire

Please follow the link to know more about this odd little weapon. 

25. More generic Green Americans.

 I can't help noticing that a lot of these pseudo-American sets are equipped with Vietnam era weapons while everybody else is firmly WW2. Maybe that's because when toymakers want to make Army men" they default to Americans. Even if the original mould was WW2 British, they get the edges filed off and rebranded as something that American kids would recognise.  

26. Germans. 

 Thinking about it, do German soldiers ever come in green? All the ones I've seen so far seem to be blue or grey.

  Is green reserved for the Good guys?

 Note that the flag is not period accurate but I'm OK with this. It would be an awkward conversation to have with a child, after all. 

27. Scottish 

And this unit is definitely Scots because along with some pugnacious Bren-gunners in 

unmistakeably Scottish headwear,  they are the only group that brings along musicians. 

 

The most warlike of all instruments. Also the most tear-jerking when played in mourning. 

 

For some reason the Scots are also the only contingent who have guys getting shot. 

Personally I like to think they're singing along to the pipes. 

Finally we come to the two largest contingents that marched in.

28. Tan

Note the Vietnam era equipment.

Also note that this unit has a LOT of those mine-detector guys.  

It's a bit hard to see how your average ten-year old would use them in a game. 

29. Dark Greens

LITERALLY the exact same troops in the same poses as the tans but in a different colour. 

I also find it interesting how almost have the unit strength is made up of some sort of specialist: 

minesweeper guys, flamethrowers, machine-gunners, knee-mortars and officers. 

Anyway, I'm almost finished with this assortment of  fierce fighting men.

I have one more bagful to snap & post then at some point I need to get all these on my kitchen floor. 

Reinforcements Have Arrived Pt 4

Quick Recap: In a fit of enthusiasm/madness *delete as you think best I bought some toy soldiers of Ebay.
It seemed like a good idea to photograph the various sets and post them here. 
It's taking a bit longer than I expected.
Now read on.

18. Very, very dark green. Or Black. It's hard to tell.  

 Some generic troops here. Not trying to be any specific army - just "Army men" although it does look a lot like they are armed with some sort of futuristic blaster. 

 Now can anybody explain what the hell these guys are doing? 

Why are they striking a fencing pose with blaster pistols? 

19. Also dark green but not as dark as the last lot while still darker than some of the others. 

Quite nice plastic quality on these. 

20. More generic Green Americans. 

I get it. Green is an "Army" colour so I suppose everybody is going to use it. 

Never mind that. Why is this chap waving a windscreen scraper around?

 20. Sort of Olive Green GIs

Another batch where it's obviously a cheap remould of something else. 

 Still, the grenade guys look really enthusiastic.

21. Even more dark green Americans. 

 Except for that one guy in a cap at the back who looks British. Bet there's a story to be told there. 

 

Digressing a bit, a staple of the old British boys comics was a character who was the odd man out: Brit serving with the US Marine (Union Jack Jackson), American leading British troops (Major Eazy), Brit flying with Russians (Johnny Red) - and so on. This did mean that you could get some  total outsider trying to cope with a clash of cultures. This frequently led to people getting punched.

Presumably somebody worked out the payroll issues offscreen.  

22. Greys. (Not the probing kind)

  

Nice change from Green.  

23. Greens with squeegees. 

A unit that came with their own flag, which is helpful. 

They also came with more Squeegee Men.  

What on earth is that all about? 

And what the hell is in their other hand?  

The world's most terrifying straight razor, apparently. 

That's it for now. I'm off in search of a cuppa and a bacon sandwich and I'll see you next time.

That's All Folks. 

Reinforcements Have Arrived Pt 3

 As seems to happen a lot with this blog, a throwaway idea turned into something that takes up more time than expected. Oh well, it keeps me from getting bored. 

Here we shall meet the latest recruits to our Ever Victorious Army.

Note how many of them are basically the same figure except in a different colour, scale and quality of moulding. Is anybody keeping track of all these for copyright purposes? 

12. Russians ( I think)

I'm categorising these as Russians purely based on the drum mags on the MG. Everything else is so generic they could be anybody.  Here's a better view. 

13. Yet another batch of Greenies. 

Amazing how many mortarmen and bazookateers you get in these toy soldier sets. 

You never see anybody carrying bags of potatoes or polishing kit. 

14. A slightly different platoon of Greens. 

This unit going for stealth rather than overwhelming firepower.

 Also, a marginally different shade of green.

Now imagine how much fun I had trying to sort these little sods out into sets. 

15. Khaki Russians

Or possibly Germans, or Americans or frigging Romanians for all I know. 

16. More Green Americans.

I have no idea what the guys in the front row are shooting at. Nazi rabbits maybe?

Now there's an idea for a comic. 

"1945. Hitler unleashes his most terrifying - yet cute - Wunderwaffen.

The SS Bunnies of Death"

17. Burly Americans

Look at the pecs on those machine-gunners. John Rambo his own bad self would be envious. 

I think that's it for tonight. 

That's All Folks

Reinforcements Have Arrived Part 2

 Continuing my trawl through the boxful of toy soldiers that turned up from Ebay.  

As I went though, I found quite a few that had ended up in the wrong bag. In my defence, one shade of government darkish green looks very much like another shade of government darkish green.

 I also couldn't help noticing that some figures very very much larger than others. 

Clearly, uniformity is going to be a challenge. 

Never mind that. Let's get on to some pictures of my Toy soldier haul. 

6.  Grey Dudes. 

Not sure what army these squaddies are even supposed to be. American, Russian, French? Lord knows.

That's the problem with cheap recastings of  figures from the 1980s or so. 

7. A squad of  Brits. 

 A small but formidable contingent of British squaddies. Paras, maybe? 

8. Green and grey

Suffering from equipment damage, these guys have been in the wars and on closer inspection seem to be made up of two different units. Let's call them Stragglers , shall we? 

9. Khaki Anti Tank  

Packing a serious amount of anti-tank firepower.  No idea what army they're supposed to be, mind you. 

As we go along we're going to see this "Bazooka" pose one of many reused in various degrees of quality. 

10. Advancing bravely.

Another lot of pseudo-GIs. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the originals moulds these are based on included Germans and Japanese. 

11. Thin Men

My first orders as Supreme Commander are for all of these men to be taken away and given several hot meals. 

Still more to come but my camera ran out of batteries so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

That's All Folks!