When Stranger Things meets The Brontes…
When Hawkins, Indiana meets Haworth, Yarkshire …
Crossposted from Man Of TIN Two blog:
Most. Bronte. Ever!
With thanks to the Bronte Babe Blog. (Cross)Posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 20 August 2022
A repost of a December 2019 “clearing the drafts” blogpost about Escape from Kraznir that I reread recently as I try to work out more RPG / narrative and fantasy elements into my Scouting Wide Games Project:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/man-of-tin-blogvent-calendar-day-23-kraznir-revisited/
August 2022 Update: New Post with the original Kraznir scenario and map which I have crudely denamed, the characters made gender neutral and differently classed or with more generic, updated character types to suit a wider range of periods:
https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2022/08/15/kraznir-denamed-and-rebooted-2022/
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN December 2019 / August 2022
These three strange figures appeared in a (school?) jumble sale mix of plastic figures in the early 1980s. I had no idea what they were, had not encountered flat figures and they were surprisingly heavy for their size.
All the lead hollowcast figures had vanished from the family by the late sixties, these lost legions possibly the casualties of parental concern about lead in children’s toys and the new possibilities of plastic.
I had no idea what these were. They had a strange marking ‘HE’ on the base.
1980/81 – This was the days before the Internet.
They were bare metal or grey undercoated when found, at some point they received my desultory painting of red and black, then languished unseen for decades.
Their survival is probably due to having been in the 1980s Blue Box for the next 25 to 30 years or more, where they remained unused in my 1980s Blue Box of odds and ends, as what use were three figures?
Image source from my blog post on the Military Modelling / Battle for Wargamers 1983 Wargames Manual – https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/06/30/brian-carricks-big-wars
I didn’t connect these orphan HE figures at all with the tempting adverts in Military Modelling in the early 1980s for these grown up, hot metal moulds. The moulds and the metal were unobtainable on my Airfix figures pocket money income, even if I could be trusted with hot metal (unlikely then).
Another 25 years pass.
Early in 2005/6 in a small craft shop on a backwater street of a backwater southwest town, by chance I discovered in a sale one Prince August casting starter set and a box of 54mm Traditional Toy Soldier moulds. At last I could cast my own figures.
Being able to cast your own figures whenever you want more and own the means of production still seems a little bit magical to me.
I have not looked back since.
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I sometimes wonder how different my toy soldier hobby life would be without that chance shop find.
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I know now that these three figures are Holger Eriksson 18th Century / Seven Years War moulds, still available from Prince August and I now have some of these moulds in my collection:
I know now that HE obviously is the talented Swedish Toy Soldier designer Holger Erickson. His HE figures from the 1950s and 1960s are still available through Prince August and from Tradition Of London including S.A.E Figures from the Featherstone era.
Brian Carrick’s excellent blog posts on Holger Eriksson:
https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/search/label/Holger%20Eriksson?m=0
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40mm?
This seemed such a weird size when I first encountered these three Unknown figures in the early 1980s. Figures to me back then were Airfix size 1:32 or 1:72/76. I now have a fair amount of 40-42mm figures in my collection and gaming skirmish units, including Pound Store Plastic copies of 54mm figures that have through copying shrunk in size, stylish HE Cowboys and Indians and of course my current STS Little Britons 42mm range Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
I wonder if one day these three stray orphan 40mm HE figures – my first metal figures – will kickstart a small gaming collection of Tricorne and Musket figures? Who knows?
These tricorne figures to me inexplicably have a Gulliver’s Travels Lilliputian look to them. If it does eventually happen, it might be unconventional ImagiNations / Lace Wars Steampunk like this 2007 blog link I found via TMP about 6 years ago. But not just yet …
http://mcristobylacew-abdul666.blogspot.com/2007/09/lace-wars-sci-fi.html
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 15 August 2022.
As a collector of toy soldier things, I found this toy soldier postcard entitled Une page de tournée (“a turning page”) on Etsy for a few pounds. I was intrigued by the toy soldiers escaping from a battle illustration in a (French) book.
A little surreal … especially the connected or disconnected collection of objects around them:
A knight statue. Spider webs. Old French postcard. Unwritten postcards. Bound volumes or old books. Lautrec style Paris Moulin Rouge / Can Can print of group de Mlle Eglantine.
They carry light machine guns and look a little like chunky Airfix British Paratroopers or Atlantic ‘euro figures’. Presumably they may be ‘modern’ 20th century French Troops? Or generic modern infantry?
Some figures escape the page or several of the figures are still in the book, covering their retreat or just wounded.
Paintings like this are designed to provoke questions.
What are they escaping from?
Have they been defeated or routed?
What story are they in? Is it a history or a fiction story?
They reminded me of a modern version of the Bronte “Twelves” toy soldiers in the famous children’s book and the art installation at Bronte Parsonage Museum.
They reminded me also a little, albeit in modern combat fatigues, of the toy soldiers which come to life in E. Nesbit’s The Town in The Library, an Edwardian children’s book:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/how-to-feed-toy-soldiers/
I knew nothing about Andre Martins but found a biographical note and digital print of my postcard here – https://www.artabus.com/martins/
“André Martins de Barros was born in 1942 in Pau, a small town in the foothills of the Pyrénées near the Spanish border. He married in 1974 and has two grown-up children.” Apparently he worked in Paris.
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There was a very interesting quote about his work by Christian Germak –
“His painting are never simple; they tell more than the story depicted on the surface and are often deep philosophical statements in themselves revealing great thoughts, secrets and symbols. They can be poetic or full of humour.”
“Each painting belies more than than one interpretations and in some pictures you sense as he is playing with his characters arranging them as children would with their toy soldiers. Whether he is using books, bodies, horses or cans, it is all a game.”
Comment by Christian Germak (translated in English by Fiona Remnant)
How odd that he doesn’t mention “arranging them as grown men and women of a certain age would still with their toy soldiers.”
Christian Germak goes on to say about Martins’ work: “The artist’s ultimate aim is to lead us in his world of dreams and fantasy and in so doing offers us the opportunity to be surrounded by and confront our own philosophical thoughts and beliefs inspired by travels through the subconscious. Experience his work and enter his world.”
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This makes me think that what we do, collecting and displaying toy soldiers in vignettes and dioramas or gaming with them, is quite similar to how Martins and other illustrators create character, scene and story along with tension, peril and emotion in a scene.
This could be said of the striking Airfix ‘Box Art’, especially for the figures and vehicles. A freeze frame from real life or a 50s 60s war film?
The same could be said of our gaming scenarios, diorama making and writers.
In some ways, painting, scriptwriting, (graphic) novels and TV scripts, some types of figure gaming and RPGs share similarities – they are all creative, character building, involve setting the scene, overcoming challenges and coming to some form of resolution.
There is an old writers maxim – “Impediment makes a narrative“, whether it is a fantasy RPG or historical War Game, a Hollywood script, TV or Radio cliff-hanger, theatre or musical performance.
This “Impediment” in our games is the contested pinchpoint of a bridge over impassable stream, the unbalanced force, the dice roll delaying the arrival of reinforcements, the ammunition running out, the Paratroops arriving off landing zone target …
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What is written on the “turning page”?
What does the book say in Martins’ strange painting?
The illustrated page is captioned “[… dade] de l’ennemi” (… of the Enemy) and the other page
“… the war costing us nearly two billion a day … we must foresee the moment when the [re…] gold of our public treasury … be started, only to settle the orders that we have made abroad. Today we export less and import more. At present we find ourselves debtors of a few nations. Here are the realities.”
It doesn’t make much sense, being roughly translated using a French to English translation online website / program.
Blogposted by Mark Man Of TIN, 15 August 2022
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B.P.S. Blog Post Script
Another artist who collected and featured ‘toy soldiers’ in his art – Andrew Wyeth
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/14/hobby-learning-1-andrew-wyeth/
A remarkable story of Canadian Guides in WW2:
An interesting gaming scenario?
Crossposted from my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop blog, 12 /13 August 2022
Recent uniform research to create new patrols of Girl Scouts and Guides, Boy Scouts and other unformed groups for my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project – a summary of recent blog posts late July / August 2022, crossposted from my other blogs:
Solo gaming: Quarterstaff fighting and Mutant Snowmen …
Blogposted by Mark Man Of TIN, 1970s British Cub Scout (Bronze Arrow, retired) 7 August 2022
Man of Tin blog 