This wild west set is a bit of a disappointment,
a two-horse team and wagon with three foot figures, two ex-Airfix Indians of sub-sub-piracy quality and a cowboy who seems to
have his DNA taken in part from Comansi
and part from Hing Fat's robot BraveStarr Galaxy Rangers' westerners!
The wagon however does seem to have a nice
wood-grain look to panels and draw-bar which is an slight improvement on some
of the smoother-modelled 1990's-2000's versions?
The Army men set for the summer of '17
(also shelfied by Brian Berke), is equally bereft of contents! We looked at the
figures last year twice so I won't bother with them here, but there's five or six figures
in the bag with a sand-bag sanger, two standard 'Hong Kong' flags with their
little mole-hill stands, barbed-wire strand and a sub-piracy of the Tim-Mee Patton tank which accompanied the original figures. Note how you
have to 'do' you own flags these days!
The Imperial
tank, this one from Peter Evans and in the greener shade of one-half of the
figures we looked at last year. The size-comparison shot is also taken with
tanks from Peter's 'Big Bag' and is just a guide; I will do a better post on
all the tanks, but probably not this year - we have looked at both the smaller
ones illustrated here I think, but there are dozens and dozens of them!
Cropped-out of and cleaned-up from an eBay
auction, on the left is a boxed set imported by Rex International for the dotcomgiftshop
shows the Imperial take on Tim-Mee figures, sandbag emplacement and
barbed-wire entanglements, but with a completely different tank and large jeep.
With a quick reminder of last year's Imperial offering on the right.
Both of which were in the big bag too! The
hull is about 70% Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger, the turret about 60% Soviet T62! To be honest, with a scale size of
about 1:48th, this would be better employed as a Space Marine fire-support
vehicle, in a fetching Russian-blue with yellow go-faster stripes and a bunch
of Games Workshop's waterslide
transfers smeared over it!
You can see both it and the jeep's also in
the same matted, chalky-ethylene as last year's Imperial figures and the Patton
. . .
. . . unlike these two who are in a far
superior polymer; a glossy HDPE or polypropylene. However, they are the same
castings from the same mould as the Rex
International version, with the same hull mark and the same wheel/axle
sub-assemblies.
Also, as you can see, a quick turret swap
gives us a 80%+ Tiger I (thanks Gisby - just the
BTR50 running gear to worry-about) and
something which is even more suited to Space Marines, despite bearing more than
a passing resemblance to a Sheridan
air-portable failed-experiment in rocket-projectiles!
Also note that again - for modern/current/near-current
production - we have a stick-on label with consumer/tracking information, this is
clearly a trend that's here to stay.
But the later - better material - AFV's
don't come with the Imperial / Tim-Mee
figures, but with a set of crappy new sculpts we will be looking at in a while
(when we do - these are numbered 19) made of the new plastic to match
the tanks.
Each importer/jobber (Greenbriar/DTSC in the case of both the Imperial sets above, despite Imperial
being a long established name in its own right) or their agent (or shipper,
shipping agent, middle-man, wholesaler, uncle Tom Cobbly or whoever) approaches
the contract-manufacturer and selects from a menu of moulds, a menu of colours
and a menu of materials/polymer types.
So Imperial
choose the Tim-Mee stuff; maybe they
originally turned-up with them, on the contract manufacturer's doorstep and
said 'Eer'mate. Knock these up for us,
will you?'. Rex/dotcom take the
figures and some of the same accessories (possibly as off-the-shelf Imperial over-production), but chose a
different tank, in the same cheap crumbly ethylene, with the unknown importer
of the other figures choosing the second type AFV's, with new figures - the
both in a more expensive material.
2 comments:
Hugh, that's a Tiger 1, not a Tiger 2 (King Tiger)
Just sayin'
Oh! I see what I did there! Only a Prince among tanks! Thanks Gisby!
H
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