It's had a broken barrel for as long as I've had it, which is a long'ish
time as I can't remember when it came in, so probably back soon after the wall
came down, and this stuff was suddenly everywhere, several of the stall
holder's at Andy Harfield's shows down in Kent used to carry Soviet die-casts
and plastic, so maybe I got it there?
Anyway I photographed it back in the summer with the broken barrel,
meaning to mend it at the time, but sort of forgot, then it sat around for a
month or two, got put away, and when I noticed the photo's again a few weeks
ago, so got it out and mended it, and took some more shots, then last week I finally
got the box translated by Nazar Marchenko, and here it is!
60 kopeks in what was probably between 1976-85 (from the codes), seems a
bit steep compared to other pre-priced Soviet-bloc toys we've looked at here of
the same era, but I guess that's reflected in the build-quality and material;
polystyrene. Note also the toothed, retaining-washer holding the turret on
while allowing it to revolve properly.
The box; Nazar has kindly translated all of it, most of which I'll
transfer to the nascent Cyrillic page, but suffice to say for now that the БССР
translates as BSSR for the Belorussian Soviet Socialistic Republic, the rest
is production stuff and age-range messages. The Box also hides a secret we'll
look at in a moment!
Mended - it was a clean break - and posed with two other candidates for
34/85's, Crescent's lead lump on the
left and the Airfix 'Attack force' readymade on the right.
I've mentioned before that the Airfix
one doesn't look right, and you can see here that it's less of the well known
tank's hull and more of a truncated pyramid! The whole thing is too tall?
The shot also reveals that the Mir
model is closer to the 1:87th of HO-gauge compatible vehicles, than the Airfix's 1:76th'ish! The Crescent (closer to 1:120th?) still has
a toothpick-barrel, but I have coloured it with art-markers to half-match the
camel-dung khaki of the original!
Ahh-yes . . . the boxes little secret, isn't actually much of a secret;
it's just too small for the model? I suspect it was shipped with the turret and
retaining-washer separate, for home-assembly? Once assembled it's 'garage'
fails to close properly!
How it will have to be from now on! And don't tell me to try it the
other way round; it's even longer . . . Central Planning huh? They made a
Buttle box for a Tuttle model!
I accidentally hit the collage button on the whole folder, and it worked
so well I kept it; turns out I could have got away with a single image for the
entire post!
A big thanks to Nazar for helping with the ID, that's Mir's slightly diminutive but rather
fine T34/85 on the Blog!
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