Minimodels is also for Almark!

I got a bit shirty a while ago and chucked this first-image up elsewhere, with a 'Sigh', after I had posted one lot (Minimodels) and someone (who clearly couldn't see his nose in front of his face) started lecturing me on how they were the other lot (Almark). Then, even as he'd been corrected, a couple of others' made the same mistake on that and another post, or thread, or whatever you have on Faceplant!

 

Now, don't get me wrong, people already know I'm prickly, or if they haven't learned that, they may have a surprise coming at some point in the future, especially if they cross me, but I don't get this almost teenage attitude among new collectors to open their mouths before they've even read what's in front of them; we're taking grown men in their forties here . . . late forties and fifties mind, not kids. 

 

It's great that there are a lot of new people in the hobby, that's obvious, and it proves the naysayers wrong, with their regular moan of 'Our hobby's dying' . . . Incidentally, everyone keeps saying the Metal hobby is dying, but actually even tatty hollow-cast seems to retain high values on evilBay?

 

And when watching this phenomena I am reminded that it is some miracle my father didn't murder me when I was a teenager - although he almost did the day I broke the 'unbreakable' fork; descending on me from the tractor-cab like a Ring-Wraith! But forks aside, I did ask an inordinate number of stupid questions.

 

I would literally think of something a bit dimwitted, and before I'd given it a moment's thought, ask the obvious! Dad was very good, he'd fix me with his look for such occasions and say "Think about it?", I'd realise I'd asked another dumb question, give it a moment's thought and go "Oh yeah! It is" or whatever!

 

It is similar with some new collectors, they don't bother to learn from the websites or magazine, but rather assume from half-understood bits, or ask about stuff which has been done to death elsewhere as if no one's ever covered it!

 

I'm probably being unfair, but then that's me, and when you post Almark and someone tells you they are Minimodels, or when you post Minimodels and someone else tells you they are Almark I think you're entitled to get a bit excised! Equally, I was polite there, but this is here!

And also frustrating is that it IS already on the blog, we've covered both makes over the years and the difference between them, I seem to recall with help from others on the German sets, but we're going to go over it all again, now, with the Japanese! But all the salient points in this post are already on the blog!

 

Five poses here, all Minimodels, we know they are Minimodels because the first image says so! No . . . because they are painted (a tad garishly) and pre-assembled with helmets in a different colour (and type) of plastic.

 

Minimodels was a toy plant in Havent, hampshire, a satellite of the Portsmouth & Southhampton conurbation, they were part of the Triang-Mettoy [Lines] group, and were set up mainly to produce Scalextric, the slot-racing system, after a move from London.

I shot the kneeling guy again, so there's only six more poses here. The figures were designed by Charles Stadden, or Chas' C Stadden, who did a lot of work for the Havent factory, producing original figures for Waddington's, Dinky (a Corgi-Mettoy rival bought from Meccano upon their demise*) and the most famous generation of Subbuteo footballers, among others. The officer is damaged and bayonets go missing too easily!

 

*An irony there is that Corgi continued to source their die-cast range's accessory figures in Hong Kong!

The Japanese on the Minimodels flyer; they were supposed to get a machine-gun team (like the Germans), but to be honest, I'm not sure it ever happened, I've never seen one, and it wasn't on the flyer, as the other 'support equipments' were - the US got a pack-mule for a Mortar vignette, seen here passim.

Minimodels got twelve poses from ten sculpts, by varying the arms on the bent-leg prone chap (crawling or firing both on the right here) and the spread-leg standing pose (advancing/thrusting or standing firing). The crawling pose is very good, with the hand correctly holding the forward sling-swivel, to keep the muzzle out of the dirt.

At some point, Almark Publishing contracted the figures as unpainted kits, getting Stadden to design some additional figures/accessories in metal, seen here before too. Boxed on the runner, with a packet of bases and simple artwork doubling as a painting guide, you get the contents of four tools.

 

Almark's eventual A-Z entry will make for interesting reading as they were attempting world domination at that point, it seemed, with ranges of books, pamphlets, periodicals, AFV modelling guides, a wide range of waterslide transfers for Aircraft and Armour kits, sticky-vinyl and licky-paper flags and a short tie-in with Bellona vac-forms, if memory serves.*

 

Add these plastic figure sets and the metal kits, and for a short while it looked like they were going places, but it didn't last long, and after 12 or 14 issues of their own modelling magazine (up against Military Modelling, Battle and Airfix Magazine) they faded away.

*Memory may not be serving here; the Bellona thing is a Micro-mould/Armtech tie-in I think, but I'm not in a position to go and check right now!

The instruction sheet, while mentioning that they are made in England, and designed by a 'master sculptor' doesn't actually claim them as Almark, or credit Lines/Minimodels. At the same time there were hyping the 1:76 set to the nines in the modelling press (with the inference they were 'Almark's'), but most of them had previously appeared in the Tri-Ang 'Battle Game', although a set of support weapons was added to the oeuvre - in plastic. Again, all previously on the Blog.

What you get in the pack; the seated figure will go with the MG, so I must have just not encountered one? And while there is a limited scope for 'multipose' beyonmd the two pairs Minimodels had already arrived at, they go very well with the eponymous Airfix set, and I dare say you could throw some Tamiya or Esci-Italeri parts in for good measure!

 

The big difference, beyond the lack of paint, is that the headdresses, are here run in the same colour polystyrene 'kit plastic' as the figures' runners, rather than the softer polyethylene in a contrasting colour of the Minimodels issues - which were by way of counter-top pick-boxes.

Matching-up between the two, this is a new sample I was quite pleased to acquire, until I remembered (well, discovered on the Blog, looking for something else) I'd Blogged them quite early (2011) having found them in the 'big purchase'. That sample wasn't complete either, but between the two, I have now got everything except the machine-gun . . . help me out here, have you seen one?

To get them out of Picasa! The same recent (last summer?) purchase also contained a couple of Americans (of which I am very short, except for the accessories; where I have both vignettes) and a handful of Germans (of which I think I may have a few somewhere, along with the machine-gun on its little wire legs), all Minimodels, not Almark!

It's a minor oddity - worth mentioning - that the 54mm range never got British troops, while the 1:76th scale/20mm set never got the US or Japanese, but did get some metal Germans, again sculpted by Stadden. Again, all on the Blog already.

" An' 'Eres ouwer Graham with a quickh remindah!"