I also said I couldn't remember what the
third thing was . . . well, it was insects! Along with dinosaurs and the same
'planes as HGL and HTI, these are all badged to Tobar, and it turned out the
Sikhs had got them in because I'd been asking for them a few days before . . .
so I had to buy a few, although they were already going out like hot cakes with
all three dispensers more than half empty, after only a few days.
Pterodactyl was purchased as the signature
species! But three other designs are available and I would imagine they will be
a lot of fun for people of a certain age? However . . . spot the deliberate
mistake . . .
. . . you can't get the wings through the
hole! To do so I had to carefully extend it without creating a cut-line that
might spread, and one has to wonder how such a thing occurred or how it was
allowed to leave the factory? And it's not a question of QA or QC, it's a
technical problem 'at the coal face' . . . very odd!
The ant, I wanted a dragonfly, but they had
all gone . . . verily - fussa-russa! But the ant's bearable, he has an odd
tail-plane and stabilisers which I suspect are supposed to be a bit of foliage
or something; there's no explanation, but the alternative (if you know about
these things) is a brain altering, lethal fungus - hardly child-friendly?!!
The bee is just silly . . . and a near-duplicate
of the ant (wings are different), while the two beetles are also cut from the
same die, the mantis looks to be a cut-above and . . . I really would have
preferred the dragonfly!
Back to the 'planes; I got the Hurricane Mk
IIC . . . it might as well be a sausage. I think it's trying to be a Western desert
theatre airframe, but suffers from the poor print resolution and reverse code
bollocks I pointed-out last time we looked at them.
Now, along with the oddities alluded to
above, this sort of think bloody annoys me . . . I know they are 'cheap and
nasty' or pocket-money toys, but . . . the artwork was done once and costed-in,
I suspect decades ago, and it's about time they were all upgraded/replaced. The
overall cost would be peanuts in an ocean.
These are clearly selling well, and
constantly as a 'traditional' toy, They are now in three outlets locally, in
Basingrad I saw the HTI ones in the Entertainer, again with plenty of room
in a once full stock-carton, so they are probably selling in their millions
world-wide. They come in very basic paper envelopes (like Sobres), and consist of a
few scraps of Styrofoam/expanded
polystyrene (which will have to go back to balsa or card as the - overdue - polymer
backlash gathers pace).
All-new artwork for the twelve/thirteen
known aircraft could be CAD'ed-up in a weekend by a couple of commercial
artists and the cost per unit, over time would be fractions of a penny. And
there's a misrepresentation element here, under consumer legislation, the
artwork on the outside of the envelopes is not depicting what falls out of
them.
The problems are not to be seen on the
dinosaurs, the insects or the foam-board/foam-core unicorns we saw last time,
suggesting the war-planes are relying on print-plates which probably go back to
the 1970's - come on guys, sort it out; you muppets! Get on to the Chinese
supplier and tell them to sort-out the printing (and the insects wings) before
some local authority's Trading Standards unit sues you!
2 comments:
I've been pushing the planes to my nephew, hoping they'll be a gateway to a proper airfix habit as he gets older.
With the ground crew providing sellotape repairs, we get about 30 minutes play per plane, before its utterly destroyed. He enjoys both the flying and carnage. Doesn't care about the squadron code or shape issues - these four year olds, wot are they like?!!
Shockingly casual by the sounds of it!!! Cheers Tomholio!
We used to fly them out to sea and wait for them to be washed-back ashore!
H
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