My Toy Soldiers & Me

The Cricket Pavilion

Simon Scott Jenkins is the author of this magnificent piece of scenery. Not much to add… crafts surprise me every other day!

Well done!

Rather charming if you ask me… leg before wicket and all that!

It was a necessity… specially for the small cabinet… the “TOKIO Tube look” is gone… so are The French Foreign Legion and the late British Empire (Kakhi)… gone to my old office to play A GENTLEMAN’S WAR with them…

So there you have it, the part of the collcetion in action stances is gone back to wargaming in Andorra la Vella… and the “ceremonial part” stays in Pal.

About time if you understand me. Yesterday afternoon it was a lot of work putting the Toy Soldiers in boxes to be moved and reorganizing the display on the small cabinet… the whole of six shelves was “gone”… but the result is satisfactory… I was already told once in Facebook that my figures needed space to “breathe”… alea jacta est.

Enjoy!

The French Foreign Legion and supports… are gone to another cabinet in my office.

So did the Kakhi British in Afghanistan… 6 shelves emptied in total…

This is the new look…You could do with some close ups but you got the idea alright!

There it is… door closed and all tip top.

The “big” cabinet slightly thinned down in numbers…

There you have it… closed down and “up to the nines”…

A fictional Last Stand

From my vault (or reserve of pics) as seen in facebook… a very good job if you ask me…

Maiwand Last Eleven in 28mm!

I forgot to comment the sense of the pics… there were several last stands of the Berkshires (66th) at Maiwand… and survivors who painfully retreated to Kandahar in awful conditions… THE LAST ELEVEN is the most notorius of all including Bobbie the dog. But all this is not the point I want to make… British Imperial History is full of adventure/gore/heroism/unknown heroes (the vast majority) and “go to your God like a soldier” in famous Kipling’s words (until the one who goes to God is your son uh?).

The point is that I predicted this vignette more than 15 years ago when I wrote a book about my passion (do not search for it it is out of print)… you see I noticed that the sculpting and painting of 25/28mm minis was such that it was bound to go Military Modeling… I was right! (wish I had been right in a more lucrative prediction!)… so one of the many reasons I abandoned the scale and went 6mm long ago. Nowadays you would be shocked to see some of the painting jobs and even “modeling” done in that smaller scale too… it seems there is no bottom to it.

Just to make things clear… I just love Mr. Aparicio work.

Enjoy!

What can you achieve in 28mm nowadays… at least Mr. Aparicio… Congratulations!

My 54mm Toy Soldiers by REPLICA… I think I will stick to Toy Soldiers… Military Modeling is too precious and static for me… nice but just for display… I love them but I do not find practical use for them.

“PURE” 54mm Military Modeling piece… already shown on the Blog…

I even did it with Playmobils! for fun of course… sold them long time ago.

John Firth’s Delhi Durbar…

See complete series of pics (including Kipling) in Facebook group mytoysoldiersandme … awesome dispaly and collecting!

Fantastic collection well displayed in a minimum of space…

Probably one of the longest series of pics on any of my posts… well deserved…

Matchless…

Sometimes I have to post something out of the ordinary… not my expertise at all… but as long as you have a pair of eyes… you can not pass over it without comenting… it just feels alive… congratulations to the author… seen in Facebook.

I can paint Toy Soldiers style, I can paint wargames figures to a reasonable standard… even in 6mm… BUT… I can not paint like this at all… probably not even modeling at that level… so my hat is off and I heartily aplaude!

Enjoy.

Fashion?

I do not know if it is the current fashion… but nowadays Facebook is full of examples of those kind of games. Toy Soldiers/54mm/Fun… not that 6mm has lost its appeal of course…

Maybe it is only my own perspective… never mind!

1870

Really in a hurry today, so… from the vault… a nice pic… hope you like it!

Enjoy.

Love the Cantiniere!… such a French Touch!

My very first Toy Soldiers… they are more than 65 years old.

In fact near than 70 years old… The state is original… those are the rests of the original paint… on anything not rigid (or even quite rigid) paint peels off I am afraid. Those three are all what remain of my big box of infancy…

My maternal grandfather used to play with me back then… that been the case it started a life long love for the “Mounties” only slightly superior to my obsession with the French Foreign Legion as a result of been exposed to BEAU GESTE (The book if you please)… and of course the Guards Regiments (Horse and Foot)… my parents always looked North from Spain… anglophiles but also liked France. My father even studied in Liverpool before the Spanish Civil War made a mess of a lot of things…

Lucky me I was born in 1952… so wars were a thing of the past… or in far away exotic places (Korea, Vietnam, Falklands,Iran, Irak, Afghanistan)… not in Europe anymore (well the Balkans)… and mainly USA wars (sometimes with staunch allies at his side)… the XXth Century was the USA Century to be sure…but we lived a long peace.

Enjoy,

RCMP REAMSA rubber/cautxuc soldiers of aprox 45mm scale

Battle of Dorking with Playmobils

Well, this is a pic from ebay (and not a very good resolution) but once the parcel arrives I will substitute for another one… yoou get the idea I guess.