Wednesday 7 August 2013

Goodbye Mr Punch

This is FN367 GENERAL CAMBRONNE, in General’s uniform and cocked hat on foot, with drawn sword and waving arm who last made an appearance on this blog here back in 2008.

 General Cambronne sporting Tony's touched-up paint work that covered up the Mr Punch look.

I acquired this figure from Tony who told me that he bought it ready-painted direct from Hinton Hunt back in the 70’s. When it arrived he was very disappointed with the standard of the paint job saying that the face of the figure was more reminiscent of Mr Punch than that of the famous French General Cambronne. In fact he was so disappointed that he ended up pretty much repainting it. Hinton Hunt Figures offered all their 20mm range for sale ready-painted and as a twelve-year-old I remember wishing I was rich enough to buy a whole army of them. However, at 88p (equivalent to £9.82 now) for infantry figures and £1.76 (equivalent to £19.69 now) for cavalry figures this had to remain a pipe dream so I was quite pleased in a way to find out that I hadn’t really missed out on much.

 No, no... not the bleach... merde!

Anyway, the time has finally come for Mr Punch to be consigned to the jar of bleach to have his old paint removed as I thought it fitting to paint him first before moving onto my first unit of Old Guard grenadiers – and not before time I hear you say.

7 comments:

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. . .

Best Regards,

Stokes

Anonymous said...

The Old Guard need someone in top notch gear to lead them after all!

'Lee. said...

So sad to see that vintage paint job stripped in some ways, but I'm sure you will do him justice. I love that nose, it's going to make a real feature of him.

Paulalba said...

I'm melting! I'm sure he will paint up well!

Have you ever tried the simple green stuff? None toxic and a great paint stripper. A house hold cleaner to.

Stryker said...

Thanks for the comments chaps.

I can now report that Mr Punch has been safely reclaimed from the bleach and is on my painting desk awaiting an undercoat.

MSFoy said...

But didn't he really say, "la garde meurt mais ne se rends pas!"? - no - probably not.

I only ever ordered a (small) handful of factory painted HH generals, and they were all pretty awful. This is in 1971-72 or so, and I have often wondered what factory painted infantry for the big selling nations must have looked like by then - the moulds were mostly shot to hell, and the unpainted figures I used to receive were mostly blobs of flash. I can't believe the ladies who did the painting would have done a lot of rescue work with a dremel - did they just send out painted blobs? - did HH send out notes to the effect that "we are sorry, we cannpt accept your money for this order because the painted figures are horrible and we would be ashamed to sell you any"?

I am not sorry I didn't order any, just vaguely interested.

Cheers - Tony

Rafael Pardo said...

Poor Cambronne!