The box! Seen elsewhere on the Internet
recently (in passing) the box artwork and contents/tray have a lot in common
with the Taffy set already looked at here at Small Scale World, but as we also saw here; the similarities with Kleeware's SPG and Taffy's Tank, two gun versions and etc . . . mean there was such
cross-pollination between these early plastic toy soldier makers (through
copying, pirating and mould-share/licensing) it's impossible to fully call.
The gun and trailer ('troop carrier') are
the same as the known-Taffy version,
the Land Rover however (complete with plug-in wing-mirrors) has been previously
seen (in civilian colours) as a 'believed to be' Tudor Rose beach-toy - or at least I think it has; I can't find it
on the Blog, or on the dongles, but I know I shot it and it's not waiting in
Picasa? I probably gave it a Kleeware/Lipkin
and co., caveat anywhoos!
Now, I think the SPG (seen previously)
appears in the US as Banner, Banner bought some of the rump of Bergan Toys (Beton) and some (or all?) Thomas
(US)'s moulds, while over here Tudor Rose
bought O M Kleeman, so the fact that
all these similar AFV's have so many parents is explainable, if not clear,
especially after the various mould-shares are taken into account!
The figures, in the set - as seen - the
advertised 7th figure is a second officer, one wonders if it might have been
meant to be the driver/stretcher bearer or the stretcher case? With neither
fitting the Land-Rover in the same way they fit the - more common - Jeep; maybe
they were subsequently excluded?
Note also with two light-sources; the
plastic colour/shade variation.
More shots; the radio-operator is obviously
damaged. I did put these on the Khaki Infantry page; after some umming and
ahrring, but they don't really belong there, that page is for the direct
piracies of the Britains and Timpo sets and their derivatives (mortar
crews etc...), while these are cruder copies of Herald's finest, and I don't use 'crude' in the derisory meaning of
the word, but to differentiate 'copy' from 'piracy'.
Cheers also to Adrian Little for
letting me shoot this interesting set at PlasticWarrior's show in May just-gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment