knights in armour

The Timpo Toy's catalogue of 1950 displays two mounted and three standing knights in their Knights in Armour series.

I don't known if these knights were designed in house by the Norman Tooth team or if they were from the team of Morrie Frumin and Roy Selwyn-Smith at Willmore and Sons ,who worked for Timpo Toys at the time making patterns.

These Figures probably stayed in production till lead gave way to plastic production in the mid 50's.

Production

Early models had no plumes of feathers pushed into their hollow-cast air hole, but later figures had a very colour range.

Finishes varied over the five years of production. The mounted knights were finished in either chrome gold/silver or gloss gold and silver, with their red or black crusader crosses.

The standing figures chrome and gloss finishes with various areas painted in gloss.

The mounted knights did not have shields. A lance which was lost very easily came with a mounted and two standing figures.

Packaging

These early knights were sold both as singles and sets

The singles were sold to the shopkeepers in trade boxes of dozen for standing knights and half dozen for mounted knights.

Boxed sets were produced in , 3 standing and one mounted, 3 standing and two mounted and 6 standing with two mounted.

Sadly the sword of mounted knight is very brittle and its difficult to get an unbroken example.

The knight to here is a great example of what you can do with a broken figure.

A change of arm direction a little filler and a new paint job, I think the modeler who changed this did a nice conversion, although a little play worn now.


Mounted with sword KN 50		Mounted with spear KN 51