About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Oxford Diecast - Military Vehicles

I really must try and get the last of the Toy Fair reports off the computer and on to the Blog!

Shouldn't be too much blurb today as the photo's will speak for themselves, second visit to Oxford Diecast's stand at the [not so] recent British Toy Fair at Kensington Olympia, and the various vehicles I shot there.

An assortment of 1:76th scaled vehicles including a nice group of steam traction engines and road-rollers, and some very nice Glenfrome (?) 6x6 Range Rovers in various liveries. I also like the AEC Armoured Command Vehicle in err . . . both liveries!

Further down the line-up sees nice soft-skins from World War Two and the Cold War and an intricate looking Bofors, along with a totally fictional 1-ton Land-Rover! In the background are some lovely showman's wagons and circus vehicles, which could help bring the lovely Preiser sets up to OO-compatibility for UK layouts.

AFV;'s in the guise of Churchill IV's (?) and both short-76mm and 'Firefly' Shermans, the fictional lanny again with another in what looks like 1:48th scale, both the 'rovers are fictional in two ways, but there'll be a post on them later!

Catalogue page with a plethora of AFV's, ancient and modern, the tele-porter 'Long Reach' is an interesting and different model; it would look good serving either a modern jet or an artillery piece/SPG in a little vignette? And we've seen the Post Office version of the BSA here on the Blog in the past.

I thought the RAF centenary set was a bit lame; three modern/late type 'rovers, a JCB and and WWII truck with the ubiquitous Spitfire? They could have done better from what they already list, with a bit of paint!

More Land Rovers, I'd love this set, but it's got another fictional one to be repainted! The three one-tons's are the best thing about this set, along with the little desert theatre paint-finished, series-one. In the background can be seen boxed-sets of thematic commercials, military and civil vehicles.

As well as the odd 1:48th scale vehicle or two, Oxford have a growing range of N-gauge vehicles and I'm rather taken by the trio of little tractors!

Knowing next to nothing of N-gauge (I had the non-powered Treble-O trains from Triang Lone Star as a kid) I can't be sure, but the Churchill looks too wide to make a useful flat-bed load, which would seem to be the main-point of making one at this size? Especially as I think they had to have the side-sponson engine/air-intake louvres removed for rail-trooping anyway? And - is the turret on backwards?

2 comments:

Terranova47 said...

CORRECTION TO: non-powered Treble-O trains from Triang as a kid.

The die-cast Treblo-O trains were Lone Star (DCMT)

Hugh Walter said...

Typo! Of course they were, one of my big regrets is letting them go at North camp car-boot for £17 quid! But I kept the Land-Rovers and the little Jaguar-Citroen things!

H