TLAPD is for Travel Like a Pirate Day

So, loosening the ties on the curtains that will draw across ITLAPD just after a nanosecond to midnight, and answering Jan's (Ye Old Site of Curiosities) call a while ago for better images of the Kinder vessels, here are those briny-battling behemoths of the carpenter's art.

These are those best suited to the era of the classical 'boys own book of . . . ' type pirates. I stress that Kinder (or its many suppliers - the upper four are from RP / RES Plastic SpA) have produced loads of wooden war-ships, cargo cutters and other tall ships over the years and these are only a few; we will return to them one day.

I'm no expert on these things, but the French-flagged one has a gun-deck, while the other from the same series (with a block-plinth) would seem to be more of a cutter?

Above are four vessels from a different series (each set of Kinder vessels typically has between 3 and 6 models), and the series consists of different front-halves and back-halves of the vessels with different sticker-sheets and different coloured plastics, to provide several vessel variants, which you have to look hard at to differentiate. The instruction sheet is the same for all the models!

Components and made-up model together from this 1993-issued ship; construction is relatively easy (see also final picture), with clip-together parts and there is nearly always a sticker-sheet of the paper type. The Ancient Egyptian/Phoenician vessel (below) is around 90mm, with the rest between 50 and 60-mil, from spar-tip to rudder-edge.

[Does that make them useful for your kind of gaming Jan?]

Slightly more medieval-looking vessels above and the ancient one already mentioned below. In the sample in storage I think I have the rest of this set and it included a Roman/Green type. There have also been larger-scales fishing vessels, leisure-craft and the like, with smaller-scaled vessels like the ferries we looked at the other day. Note how one vessel has paper sails.

It was only when I was wording the blurb for the second picture that I realised there was a shot missing from the folder? Turned-out it had been deleted by mistake and as I'd finished the collages for the other images, I took the opportunity to scan the little instruction sheet!

From Corplast via Ferrero comes a slightly more complicated one with a frame-check image like a Japanese or Esci AFV kit, so you can check all the small bits are there! This also has paper sails and is one of the larger scaled, smaller vessels.