T is for Tank in a Tin

"It does exactly what it says on the tin!"

Bit of an investment this one, as it was £11.99! I passed on it at Christmas for reasons of price against available budget, but the other day A) I had a spare tenner to fritter away on a tank in a tin, or even a tank not in a tin and B) people had broken the seal on a couple of the aforementioned tank tins, so the contents (light-feeling and anonymous back in December) were open to a quick inspection, and I would then have been failing - both this and the Airfixfigs Blogs - had I turned-away again!

There you go . . . a tin, with a tank; a tank in a tin, there's really no doubt about the matter! The tank wrapped in a bubble-sock and the figures in a little stash-bag! All in a tin.

The customer information panel on the base is a firmly glued card sheet, almost certainly over the printed date of a partner importer elsewhere or the factory  and the Funtime Gifts branding doesn't seem to match what may be that partner/originating-factory's logo with seems to be an 'M' but might be an MW cypher?

The tank (from the tin it's come in) is described as a M41 Walker Bulldog and apart from a road-wheel missing in each side seems to be a reasonable model of one in a slightly over-1:72nd scale, maybe closer to 1:70th or even 1:64?

It comes with 12 copies of the Airfix '2nd version' US Marines, which, through the bag, in the store (Waterstone's have them at the moment) looked as if they were Hornby-supplied, but which upon unpacking were revealed to be good-quality piracies; four each of three poses, manufactured in a PVC-like polymer with some of the properties of a polyethylene.

Further to previous posts, you can see here that a skilled copyist has ensured the pantograph produced figures of exactly the same size, but some detail has been lost by the vibration of the cutting-head/burr-drill which has not be re-etched in afterward (by an engraver/finisher), the Tank in a Tin figure is on the right in both shots.

In the powering-up I encountered a few problems which those of you chaffing to rush out and buy one of your-own Tank in a Tin's need to be aware of;

The AAA (Triple-A) battery is NOT supplied and will need to be sourced. When you remove the screws and split the model, you will find that the middle gear in the drive-chain (A) pops out of it's housing, slip it back in by all means, but don't try tightening the motor-housing screws (C) (as I did - it'll just hold everything too tightly), because the spigots (B) actually hold the gear-shaft in place during normal operation!

Also the PVC glue used to seal the track-join will have filled a few of the sprocket-tooth holes in the tracks, you may wish to open them-up again with a hot needle. For similar reasons (of more realistic running) the sprooket-teeth may need a bit of flash removed and some of the wheels have mould-gate (incorrectly; 'sprue') residue which can be trimmed off.

Finally; if you've not made a note of it before or during the above 'base-workshop' phase, the track-pad 'arrows' point to where the tank is going above the wheels and where it's been below the wheels (yellow arrows) when you need to refit them.

It's a nice little runner - albeit in one direction only - and I'll try to do a video at some point - when the weather improves! The three-point drive-chain reducing the speed to a decent 'scale' speed - it's runs-over the infantry in a satisfyingly slow fashion!

I love a bit of detective work, and I love a bit of a challenge, so when I thought I recognised the silhouetted figures on the side of the tin I had to try and reproduce them!

They were the SoldierWW2 font (which worked so poorly on last year's PW Show announcement - only three months 'till the next one!) I've posted a link to before , but most of them had been reversed (all but the two underlined ones - both 'duplicates'), so I had to type them into a word document, colour the page appropriately, take screencapchas, put the .jpg's back into the word document as picture-elements, flip/reverse them, screencap' again and remove the two which had to be the right way round and add them as actual font-element/additional over-text's to the picture, and then save!

I think they are older Men At Arms images and might be . . .

m - French or Polish?

C - French

] - German

3 - British Paratrooper (not reversed)

u - Japanese or Russian? (with anti-tank rifle)

e  - Japanese in cap

3 - British Paratrooper

[ - German Paratrooper

o - US Marine?

8 - US GI?

= - US Marine or GI!

e  - Japanese in cap (not reversed)

So that was that half-sorted! The silhouette tank drawn next to them, which the two groups are following round the sides of the tin (with a tank in) is a Soviet T54/55!

This is probably about twice the size (around 1:35th), coming out of Japan and is the old Masudaya (Modern Toys) version of what is - I think - another M41 Walker Bulldog, (not an 'M-12'!) also battery-operated and also reduced to four road-wheels. Thanks to Jan Yarzembowski for the image.