News Views Etc...Magazine Articles

W is for 'Well, Fancy That'...as Private Eye would say!!

Actually I'm sure it's a complete coincidence or a bit of synergy, rather than the close relationship between my posting and an appearance elsewhere, that the article below has appeared so soon after I covered them, not that I haven't influenced some other's output; Subbuteo cricketers and Midgetoy space cars springing to mind - as fast as they follow my posting them here!

As a further act of synergy a reader in NZ brought the article to my attention the same day the issue was issued over here, so it's nice to know that a magazine gets launched at the same time everywhere!!

If you enjoyed my 7 or so posts on the mini-trucks based on the Dinky 1-Ton Humber, you really must get a copy of this months Model Collector magazine, where Nigel Robertshaw gives them equally full coverage, but very much from a civilian point of view, and including the metal I omitted. Some of the body types are new to me, including lovely construction vehicles and tanker-trucks, while it was interesting to see my childhood Christmas cracker fire engine ladder-truck carded with a pumper, cherry-picker and others.

He also has a decent shot of a restored radio-shack bodied Humber with expanding side-canopy. Lovely shots of both boxed and carded HK examples and civilian versions in the larger sizes from both NFIC and Sam Toys made this a fascinating read for me and I'd already bored myself to death with the things!!!

The real gem in the article is a Military 'Services M.T. Garage' which he suggests is HK, but I suspect is Kleeware, it's a dead-ringer for their civilian 'Service Station' with the three little ex-Pyro cars. Do try to check it out, these magazines so rarely cover plastics; anything we can do to encourage them...



Also; and at the risk of being accused of blowing my own trumpet, some of you may have noticed that I'm 'Letter of the Month' in the January issue of Toy Soldier and Model Figure (TSMF), only by dint of happenstance, however; the first I knew of it was the arrival in the post without warning of an American Minuteman - British colonial insurgency, not stray ICMB! - from W. Britain.

As someone with the level of cynicism that never quite believes media announced prizes ever get given (why are they aways won by an elderly couple from oop'north?), it was nice to see they actually do! Although he's already been lost in the move, it's a temporary 'lost' to a TBS-box [To Be Sorted], and when he turns up again I'll blog him with some Britains and Marx, as I have so few 'New Metal' figures in the collection - in any size!! So - many thanks to the Editor; Stuart A. Hessney for the award.

My insurgency 'dig' aside; there's also an irony in that the rump of Britains, a British company who made - among other things - the lovely Eyes Right AWI are now wholly American owned - the very people who broke away from their governance at Westminster - now making Revolutionary War figures...history huh? Makes you glad not to be French...

Right; that's everyone plugged or insulted! Back to toy soldier blogging!....