Giant Set No.981 Roman Legion Assault Group 59¢ 1963

The Romans weren't strong on cavalry, they did use them for scouting and patrolling the boarders of empire, sending signals and such like, and the books tell they were recruited from or tended to be the Aristocracy, but in fact they would have used horse-riding peoples from around the Empire for serious mounted work.

But clearly a few 'Toffs were allowed to ponce about on the edge of the battlefield, picking off stragglers or retreating enemy while staying relatively safe? Anyway - this set 'Assault group' is half and half cavalry and Infantry, and both disappoint to one degree or another!

Packaging follows the rules laid-down by set 980 (previous/older post), with the two-colour, screen-printed card folded-under and stapled to trap the rim of the blister in a sandwich of card, and the dotted line (which most developed humans in the 1960's knew to mean 'cut-here') indicating where to dig!

Blisters are the same size, which means more Infantry (about 40) that cavalry (10) as those hollow, 'Hong Kong' horses are room-occupiers with all those arms and legs and tails and stuff!

But . . . the mounted element consists of nine standard-bearers (meant to be Agamemnon in the Britains Herald universe) and one bloke with a shield so big it would shelter a family!

So to the disappointment with the foot-arms; it is that at least six are not ancient Romans (or Greco-Trojans!) but Giant medievals, and while it may be a case of making-up the numbers, that they are mixed together quite well, would suggest a deliberate act, probably applied to the/a whole batch, which, by modern terms would be a fraud, not that they worry about such things in rack-toys, then or now, but still a bit of a swizz!

We'll look at the Medievals in detail another day, but it's interesting to get them together like this as we can see two marking's running side-by-side, quite early in the short history of Giant's output, later Medievals (the smaller black & silver versions) would get the full 'P' nonsense, but here they have a cleaner GIANT over HONG KONG in a DIN font. The true Romans get a more scrappy mark , which I've previously looked at a possible history-of, on the Home Blog, here.

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But is it Giant?

Yeap! As sure as shit's found in a midden!