S is for Self-propelled

It don't rain but it pours! My camera is playing up, I have to rewrite last nights post and suddenly there's a visitor spike of a hundred people an hour!! So a quick small-scale'ish article for the visitors from PSR using old archived photo's from a year or so ago...

The SPG at the back has been seen here before, the Jean-Hoefler 'dime-store' toy, this time pulling the other mounting for the gun moulding. The Airfix Ferdinand/Elephant is an oldie but a goodie! (and hopelessly overvalued on feeBay, they're not that rare, it's the box that's rare). While the little air-portable ASU-57 is a bit larger at around 1:48, a die-cast model from the former Soviet Union, where they were often made in the same factories that made the real one's in factory 'down-time'.

Far to the fictional side of the tracks are these three; The dark one is by/from a dozen names (Kilty's Bonnie-Bilt, Built-rite, Sears, Argo at Loser's, J.C. Penny etc...) and while originating in the US, seems to have been moulded over here at some point as part of a mould-share with someone. The pale one - again - has been seen here before, and as I explained at the time seems to be Tudor*Rose.

Both the above have a mechanism in them which enables the commander to pop-up and down like a demented road-runner while his barrel thrusts in-and-out like a demented....er...well, in and out anyway!

The metallic space-tank is from Dibro, who also seem to have produced a tin-plate toy tank under the 'Gibro' label, I don't know if they are separate companies or if they used the first letter as an in-house product code? I thought these came in metallic blue as well the other day, but it cleaned-up the same colour!