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.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

F is for Fontanini - Part 3 - Waterloo

Or at least the 'Napoleonics'. Hard to tell if this is a set of eight, or a set of ten poses, I suspect the giant ones are (or include) poses/pose variations not found in the line's smaller sizes? There is also a pair of mounted figures in the same line.

I've been asked not to add too much waffle to this post by another author who is preparing an article on them for Plastic Warrior - so after the verbiage of the last two posts I'll try to keep this text-light!

Looked at the other day in the fun post on size, they are really huge and weigh kilo's! I don't know how big they are but you can judge from the other figures in the shot that they are 800mm+. Neither pose seems to exist in the smaller sizes.

You don’t fly these back to the UK or the 'States unless you're wealthy (but then you'd need to be pretty well-off to buy them in the first place!), but you could drive them home - although they might need they own passports?!!

Their smaller brethren, these are the same size as the Rococo/Regency couple and pirate we looked at yesterday and have been given - in the case of the foot figures - the same washed-out, subdued hue, finish.

The same can't be said for the two mounted figures, who have been given a supremely attractive, even 'classy' finish, subdued palette again; but the subtly-weathered, solid colour gives them a real campaign feel, the horses too, are lovely.

Fontanini produced their mounted sculpts as pairs, primarily for the tourist trade with the result that when they dipped their foot in the 'Toy Soldier' market by scaling-down to 55/60mm, they ended-up with a lovely set of cowboys and Indians with lots of foot poses but only two mounted figures and one horse pose for each set of protagonists!

Another PW show-purchase, I think these have been repainted by the end-user, but it's a neat job in flat, matt colour and gives them the appearance of just stepping out of an old print. They seem to have been numbered in sequence, unlike the Rococo figures where my two are over a hundred apart - in a set of four!

The guy with the musket across his chest is a new pose from the previous image and missing from the eight are a dismounted Dragoon (French)/Life Guard (British) type, a [British?] Grenadier in busby and an [Austrian/Russian?] Grenadier in mitre-cap. Similar headress'ed figures of guidon-bearers and drummers appear in the larger Carrara sets

Hope that's brief enough P?

Back to Fonplast tomorrow.

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