AFV is for Among my Favorite Vehicles!

We've seen these here before at Small Scale World, not least than because I quite like them, and while I did pick a few up back in the early days, they tend to carry a bit of a premium these days and can't be found for 'pennies'! I shot these after the toy soldier show at Witton back in May, and thank Adrian of Mercator Trading for letting me do so.

The low-loader, not really a tank-transporter, but given the diminutive size of the tank in the series (Tri-ang Minic's plastic 'Push-and-Go' range) manages the job and is seen here mounting the - conversely - rather large armoured car.

The clear-plastic radar dish has warped slightly, something the similar dish-shaped piece from Wells-Brimtoy also suffers from, I don't know if this was a specific problem with early styrene in 'clear' or if they were still using a celluloid base for the material, but it mars an otherwise unusual subject.

Like the crawler-tractor, this is as common in civilianised colours (bright orange and red seem commonest) as it is in military guises, and like everything on this page (except the 'Jaguar'?) was also available in an RAF blue-grey.

My absolute favorite (and not in my collection), I thought I'd posted this before; a lovely civilianised (or Dr Death's SMERSH-affiliated secret army) one in black and red but I think it may be one I downloaded from the Internet*! Everyone else was doing twin-mounts, this has 'something of the dark' (or Dalek's) about it!

*It may have been sent-in by somebody, but I have no recollection of it so I can't run with it as I've no provenance, if you sent it, let me know and I'll do it as a follow-up.

Army fire-engine! The important thing here is the ladder, so often missing or damaged; it's nice to see it complete and in a sensible colour - a lot of toy fire engines end up with bright yellow or silver ladders! I have one [now below] - sans ladder!

This seems to be a Jaguar and was new to me, whether it came in the larger military boxed-sets or was just moulded in the same plastic and sold as a civilian car I don't know, but given the numbers of all the other models in the range I've seen over the years, I'd go so far as to say this is a less common piece.

These were all in the previous posts showing my examples, although I think my breakdown-truck (wrecker) is not so well-equipped with original hook! My crawler is green - I think - and we saw the orange logging one a while back. I always think that if you swapped the turrets on the two AFV's they'd both be dramatically improved!

I found a few images of mine 'from the archive', preparing this post, the shots were saved when I shut-down my ImageShack account - a fair few years ago - and they have lost some resolution. The dark green is a late colour without the red-yellow, painted formation-sign, fore 'n' aft, which all the early ones have.

A couple more saved from the same place, compared with a 'Chinatruck' on the left and an older NFIC, itself a Pyro-Kleeware copy of the 1-ton Humber truck on the right. Without the radar (which I didn't know it was missing first time it was posted!) it still makes a useful office-body for HQ units (old school war-gaming!) and at least I know what ladder I'm looking out for now! Cheers Adrian.