H6-5! Best said in a West Country accent; Curr'un
Cider! We're returning to the previous post with a simple fix for that rather
leery truck we saw.
As it comes from PMS, stickered-up to
within an inch of its life, and hardly the low-visibility or 'subdued' scheme you'd
want on a military vehicle; with the sun on it, I fancy you could spot it from
the International Space Station!
But they are all simple paper stickers and
were mostly destined for the bin!
The removal revealed weirdness, moulded
into one side as full cavities in a stencil style, the letters ABCOK, which is then fully mirror-reversed
on the other side so you can see right through them both like the two ends of a
tunnel?
Now does this mean ABC OK, which might mean the vintage ABC is still extant as part of the
modern Chinese toy industry (very unlikely)? Or is it poorly selected random
letters because someone detailed someone else to select and cut some letters
into the tools for some inexplicable reason? Or is it a more insidious
hidden-behind-a-sticker thing, like the abbreviation for 'American Bastard
Customer' or 'All Brit's Cocks'?
I doubt we'll ever know, if it was an Early
Learning thing on un-stickered civilian versions of the toy it would be ABCDE
or ABCXYZ or something wouldn't it? I suspect sample text on the CAD drawing which was accidentally transferred to the CAM tooling and reversed 100% for the other cavity! But there you are - spurious letters cut
into the sides of the truck for no [apparent] reason!
I then cut new plain paper stickers from
heavy parcel labels and coloured them in with a Sharpie! Simple, but effective, although the sides needed about
four coats of Sharpie to lose all the
pen-lines and hide the letters underneath. I used an old agate nail-buffer to smooth
the sticker down especially round the edges and the four corners
Neatly converts a leery truck into a
logistics curtainsider, although pretty fictional and we have to ignore the
wheels for now! It's a sort of 5½-7½-ton rigid-bodied puddle-jumper
(with a 'big-rig' cab!), around 1:48th/40mm compatible. And as you can see I
left the 'sensible' stickers front and back for a bit of interest! And thanks again to Peter Evans of PW for the PMS Truck.
Good morning Hugh,
ReplyDelete(I just tried to comment and may have experienced a glitch so if this is a repeat please ignore) When I saw the uncovered truck I had a thought as I have been collecting the new GI Joe Classified action figures. In the GI Joe comics and, if I remember correctly, the animated series, the terrorist organisation COBRA often ship materials in trucks with the name of their front company ARBCO- they may be evil-but not necessarily original or clever! (mind you, our heroes didn't spot it right away so...) now we have a K instead of an R but it's close enough to make me wonder if someone was paying tribute? Well enough rmbling in your backyard Hugh, have a good one of whatever you're having!
Hello Hugh!
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a few unusual toys from China showing up.
I’ve seen the truck you’ve featured, but I think it needs extra rear wheels to look right as a sort of semi trailer.
I’ll post some pix later today on my blog.
There’s tank transporters and a variety of gun/missile platforms, some not bad, some real head scratchers.
Anyway, I always enjoy your posts, and have a Merry Christmas if I don’t get a chance to say it in the next few weeks!