J is for John Piper

A strange one this, for a short while in the late 1970's and early 1980's, this firm - John Piper - seemed to flourish, with smart, well illustrated adverts across the modelling press, railway, naval and military, I don't know if the aircraft modellers were similarly enticed?

Yet, the paucity of stuff they seem to have actually left behind, the lack of familiarity people have with their products compared with, say, Scale Link or [Françoise] Verlinden, suggests they didn't actually ship much product for the cost of all that glossy advertising?

And one has to assume there was a major investment by someone, a backer or the eponymous Mr. Piper himself? The trouble is, even the model railroad hobby, much bigger than vintage toy soldier collecting, can only support so many small, 'garage' businesses, with those that start to struggle in the regular downturns, selling to one of the slightly bigger concerns, so that they might ride-it-out with an increased inventory, while the small guy escapes, hopefully with a small profit, or breaking-even, or at least still with his shirt?

Courtesy of Jon Attwood

(I love the Lettraset font!)

I may have a few of the figures in the unsorted/unknown section of the whitemetal tub in storage, but don't recognise any of the above, off-hand, while I lusted after the AFV's, as they would have gone with the Roco and Roscopf stuff, Dad's instructors had given me in Neuhausen! The 'Grey Goose' apparently turns-up occasionally, usually for a lot of money! The choices of odd scales can't have helped with the military sales?

 

I have a feeling John Piper over-extended with the launch and marketing, found the markets weren't that big and folded with the sort of debts that require the assets being weighed-in for scrap? Does anybody have any solid info' on what happened to them, or their tools, how much business they did, or what their history was? Is there anything in G2 or On Parade in the back-catalogue of Military Modelling? For now at least, box ticked.