More of those curious Airfix Space Warriors:
Crossposted from Mark Man of TIN Blog Two, 31 January 2022
Month: January 2022
Airfix Space Warriors go snowballing?
Snowball = Laser ice boomerang?
54mm Airfix Space Warriors go snowballing?
Shades of Tron?
Crossposted from my Man of TIN Blog Two site by Mark Man of TIN, 30 January 2022:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/airfix-space-warriors-go-snowballing/
The 1930s Milliken Model Method of Teaching History using toy soldiers – BMSS
Ernest K. Milliken, toy soldier collector, author and educator …
Posted from my ManofTIN blog two,
Posted by Mark Man of TIN, 24 January 2022
Pathe Newsreel – Model Battlefield with Magnets, a Donald Featherstone connection
Tiny Stonehenge! 1936 Pathe Newsreel – Model Battlefield
Crossposted from my Man Of TIN Two blog:
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/model-battlefield-pathe-newsreel/
Micro Militaries or Europe’s Tiniest Armies – Mark Felton on Youtube
I can’t remember how I found this but I already keep an eye out / subscribe to the Mark Felton Youtube channel and found this episode on https://youtu.be/dBRdLYUkDKk
It reminds me that many of the back stories of our ImagiNations such as my Forgotten Minor States (FMS) are not really that far fetched, when listening to this account and seeing the impressive, mostly ceremonial uniforms.
Some of the uniforms are featured in the book Uniforms Uniforms by Bill Dunn that I reviewed here https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/uniforms-uniforms/
Well worth watching – Fascinating and quirky, especially the twelve man national army!
Blog post by Mark Man of TIN, January 2022Blog
Donald Featherstone a 2013 tribute from his old club Southampton FC
I missed this post first time round. Donald Featherstone’s professional career and early work as an author was as a physiotherapist on work, dance and sports injuries.
Here is the club tribute to him by David Bull from 2013, copied in case this website post disappears.
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Saints Official Historian David Bull remembers Don Featherstone, the club’s physio in the 1950s, who has just died.
https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2013-09-18/don-featherstone-an-appreciation
Main pic: Physio Don Featherstone manipulates the knee of full-back Bill Ellerington, while manager George Roughton looks on.
Don Featherstone, who has died aged 95, was the club’s physio at a troublesome time in the Saints’ history.
After war-service in the Royal Armoured Corps, Don was practising physiotherapy in his native London, hoping ‘very much to get into sport.’ He had spent a couple of years at the Athletes Clinic in Harley Street; and then, when AIK Stockholm visited London in November 1949, to play Chelsea and Arsenal, he acted as their physio during their stay.
For the 1950-51 season, Don was the first-team trainer to Hounslow Town in the Corinthian League and was writing a column, in Topical Times, on sports injuries. When that magazine received an advert from Southampton FC for a physio, the editor shared it with Don in advance of publication.
Thus given a head-start, Don dispatched a one-page letter of application-cum-cv. He didn’t’ mess about. He told the club that only two Hounslow players had missed a match through injury and the team had gone 17 weeks, unchanged – not bad, he suggested, for a part-time physio, treating injuries two evenings a week and an occasional Sunday morning. Just think what he might achieve, working full-time. Don told the Southampton directors that he’d appreciate a club-house and ‘a salary on a level with the basic pay of First Team players.’
He was appointed forthwith and started work in August 1951. It was an odd set-up, under Sid Cann, a former Manchester City and Charlton Athletic player who had qualified as a masseur. He had been Southampton’s masseur-cum-assistant trainer for three seasons, until the manager Bill Dodgin left in 1949. Of three internal candidates, Cann landed the vacancy. But trainer Sam Warhurst, an unsuccessful applicant, was still there. A former Saints goalkeeper, he didn’t have a lot of time for Featherstone, with his ‘new-fangled’ ways. At least Don felt that he got on well with the players, including the all-powerful captain, Joe Mallett – the “Godfather”, as Don saw it.
It was Mallett who tipped Don off about an odd development in December 1951. The side had been having a poor run, including an 8-2 defeat at Bury, when Cann resigned. So the Board apparently decided that, while they no longer wanted him as manager, it would be good to retain him as the physio, in which case Featherstone would have to go. Cann, to his credit, was having none of that.
So Don remained until 1955, when the chairman advised him that, despite his ‘excellent work’, the club’s ‘difficult financial situation’ required ‘the utmost economy’, which included dispensing with his services. Don was not without work – he had a private clinic round the corner from The Dell – but when Ted Bates became the manager in October 1955, Don did ask for his job back.
Bates continued to plead that the club had no money. Before long, Don realised that his dismissal ‘was the best thing that ever happened’ to him.
He was soon writing books on physiotherapy and then branched out into military history and war-gaming, a field in which he would become an internationally-renowned author, with 40-odd titles to his name.
DONALD FREDERICK FEATHERSTONE
20 March 1918 – 3 September 2013
https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2013-09-18/don-featherstone-an-appreciation
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I have written a little about his early / other career:
My small Featherstone “Saints” Southampton FC physio centenary tribute using Airfix 1:32 footballers in 2018 – I’m sure the Don wore a suit and tie and not a tracksuit.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/donald-featherstones-centenary/
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This blog post was incidentally inspired by this Dunfermline FC inspired one:
http://prometheusinaspic.blogspot.com/2022/01/hooptedoodle-420-whence-pars.html
And my 2020 blog chat with Marvin @ Suburban Militarism
https://suburbanmilitarism.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/return-of-the-macc/
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 16 January 2022
Meanwhile back in the bunny hospital …
Whilst the Spanish Armada invasion land forces assemble , a strange creature arrived on the painting desk today.
Now that’s what a lop rabbit …
The Bunny Hospital opened its Nightingale Ward temporarily today …
Its only patient was discharged on the same day after minor reconstructive surgery.
“Just all in a day’s work, ma’am …” (We never sleep.)
Blog posted by ‘Doc’ Mark Man of TIN 15 January 2022
The benefits of 15mm scale explained to the ’little woman’ in your life? Some early Peter Laing adverts in Wargamers Newsletter 1970s
I have spent a blustery wet day today inside in the dry and warm, reading through the superb website of scanned Donald Featherstone’s Wargamers Newsletters.
I have been searching for Peter Laing adverts and reviews from the early 70s, looking at how the new scale and ranges of 15mm figures by the “industrious” Peter Laing rapidly emerged.
https://collectingpeterlaing15mmfigures.wordpress.com/some-peter-laing-adverts/
One of the oddest Peter Laing adverts so far was December 1973 typed advert (above) about the benefits of 15mm and the first six figure series or ranges totalling 100s of items that Peter Laing produced in his first year!
“If she * (the little woman – Mum – the Wife – the Girl Friend – or the better half!) complains that your army or collection is taking up too much room (or you are spending too much money) then Peter Laing’s figures could be the answer …”
Peter Laing 15mm Colonial figures (including bagpiper) – the unusual route to marital bliss?
I wonder what Mrs Laing – Wife – Better Half – etc thought of the advert?
These “Little Women” in Peter Laing’s life didn’t emerge for a few more years in the Late Victorian Parade Range (and probably ACW and Indian Mutiny Series).
By Christmas 1973, interest was growing in the new smaller scales of 15mm and 5 or 6mm. Minifigs has also by then launched a 15mm and 5mm Range.
In December 1973 I was still literally cutting my teeth at “Floor Games” level on larger plastic Airfix figures. Ten years later c. 1982/83 I would be buying my first Peter Laing ECW figures with my pocket money and paper round earnings.
This cataloguing and celebrating my Peter Laing figures (all now sadly out of production) is one of my ongoing 2022 projects and New Gaming Year’s Irresolutions, counting down towards the 50th anniversary of the first figures in October / November 2022.
Why do this? Pertly it’s because Peter Laing never produced an illustrated catalogue before the range vanished in the late 80s / early 90s when he retired. Now the moulds have sadly vanished.
Fellow Peter Laing collectors from the MeWe Peter Laing collectors circle have already started to contribute photos of figures or ranges I don’t have and sometimes figures I have never seen.
https://collectingpeterlaing15mmfigures.wordpress.com
The first advert October / November 1972 Military Modelling (Ian Dury collection)
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN blog, 8th January 2022
Herbert George Wells 1921 Census
In summer 1921 H.G. Wells was living at Little Easton, Little Canfield, Essex
He had a very interesting international household of visitors (ones to explore this weekend) and some new servants, not the familiar names found in the 1911 Census.
WW1 and the Spanish flu pandemic had happened over the last ten years.
A little disappointed that my Find My Past subscription only seems to give me a small discount on transcripts and separate charges for the census scan page.
Read more about H G Wells, Little Wars and Floor Games –
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/h-g-wells-little-wars-floor-games-toy-theatres-and-magic-cities/
Blog posted by Man of TIN blog, 1921 Census release day, 6 January 2022
Paint it Red or Paint it Black?
Anyone else play period themed music whilst they paint? I often play themed music whilst I’m painting Toy Soldiers, usually music from the period
Today’s first painting day of the year saw me listening to a mixture of 90s Skate Punk and Spanish Armada music.
A curious mix, I hear you say?
but then I was was basing Vat 19 Skateboarders for my Skrafiti project – so Avril Lavigne’s Sk8tr Boi is good for 90s uniform colours, sorry skater baggy clothes from the late 90s …
First job, start basing the old AJ ‘s Toyboarder’s skateboarder figures (still available from Vat 19) on mdf tuppeny bases as they are forever falling over. Background peeg decal is a freebie with my last Bronte order from Annie Norman at Bad Squiddo, which reminded me of large urban graffiti murals … now to watch those skate punk videos for uniform colour scheme details, unless there’s a handy Osprey on SkatePunk?
For painting Spanish Armada era 54mm figures from Chintoys? Spanish Armada period music for my Arma-Dad’s Army Project, listening to the Saydisc recordings 1588: Music from the Spanish Armada on original instruments by the York Waits.
Arma-Dad’s Army project summary page: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/arma-dads-army-elizabethan-home-guard-1580s-1590s-operacion-leon-marino/
The red Tudor beret of the kneeling figure has a elite fierce special forces / Guevara revolutionary look. Good Queen Bess and Ralegh undercoated and glimpsed at the back by essential reading matter. A few Hingfat pirate figures have joined in as Spanish sailors.
Paint it Black or paint it Red?
Two black and red colour related songs kept popping into my head about the a-historical cartoon choice of colours for my Spanish Fury reinforcements:
“… I raise my flags, don my clothes / It’s a revolution, I suppose/
We’ll paint it red to fit right in” from Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, 2010s
Or Paint it Black – Rolling Stones from 1966
Why red and black? The Spanish Armada Osprey book title shows a good range of uniform colours, with no one dominant or exclusive national colour for Spanish or British Elizabethan era troops. Both sides had a white flag with a red cross. The St George + Cross for Britain, the saltire type X Cross for Spain. How confusing!
My growing muster of Elizabethan conversions and (right) ECW trained band figures in blue!
By the 1580s/90s various shades of Blue was quite common for English troops (green and white in earlier Tudor times), so my muster and trained band are in work clothes and military green and blue shades.
Black and Red: My previous or first set of Spanish Conquistadors from Chintoys https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/the-spanish-fury/
Inspiration for the black and red came from some vintage figures:
These two Elizabethan Monarch Cherilea 1960s figures have blazing torches. Watch out Cornish towns! Sold – These three lovely vintage figures joined my forces last Christmas 2020.
I really liked these fragile Cherilea figures with their black, red and silver colour scheme with leather brown.
This was it, dark colours, the black and red diabolical colours of flames! I have painted them as fearsome as Tudor Propaganda and the Cornish might have seen or talked about these Spanish ‘devils‘ who fired Cornish seaside towns and churches in 1595.
Before I run into BLM (Black Lives Matter) and Woke history issues / problems, the Spanish raids of 1595 really did happen …
Caption/ image source: https://bradleybasement.wordpress.com/comedy/dads-army/a-soldiers-farewell-tv/
But I have also realised that this whole Arma-Dad’s Army scenario is another long period-costume cheese dream of one Captain George “Napoleon” Mainwaring or a fever dream for Private Frank “Nudgeof” Pike (Stupid Boy!) in the Warmington Home Guard. Thus, this Arma-Dad’s Army Project also links with my Look Duck and Varnish Home Guard Gaming.
That’s two or three ticks on my New Gaming Year Irresolutions 2022 already ..
Phew, useful a-historical “but it was all a strange dream” ethical get-out clause!
So that’s what’s in my ears and on the painting table to start the New Year …
How are all your New Gaming Year’s Resolutions going?
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 2 / 3 January 2022.
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B.P.S. Blog Post Script
The much covered sons “Radioactive” by US band Imagine Dragons has a suitably bizarre pop music video with illegal betting on a muppet style gladiatorial contest where kapok and fur literally flies – but don’t worry, justice is served in the end https://youtu.be/ktvTqknDobU
The “Radioactive” video all reminded me somewhere between Pokemon and the plush fur and toy soldier Fuzzy Heroes rules reviewed on Board Games Geek. As a fan of simple games rules I have not tried these yet but there is an interesting write-up on Fuzzy Heroes and role playing games with kids at Wired / Geekdad:http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/11/roleplaying-wit/
As I mentioned “Radioactive” is a much covered song, ranging from the genre morphing musical Time Machine of Postmodern Jukebox , the more acoustic covers of Radioactive by the Gardiner Sisters and First to Eleven.
Man of Tin blog 