T is for Tail Ends

Well, more card Buses! You may notice that these are from P-Z, and think that's it, but you'd be wrong, I forgot to check N and O, I think, so there may be one or two lurking there, while a slew of them are in the queue from across the pond, although some have travelled there from here! And I've only been showing you those which fit A4 storage slip-cases, so there's still a box of bigger stuff to come at some point in the future!

Another giveaway from a Bus company, this time Strathclyde's Buses, and printed by Gordon Petrie of Stonehaven, a simple design, but with nice floor-pan reinforcing, and a complicated fold under the front windscreen!

 

I also have a full-sized (well, original?) sticker for the driver-operator's window, so I could start a fake Strathclyde Buses service . . .all I need to do is buy a bus, paint it to match the defunct company's buses, make sure it has a 'slot' and drive around collecting fares until I've got enough to drive-off into the sunset - flawless plan!

 

 

The other card of this two card model is behind, and there's no clue as to who supplied these to Richard Kohnstam (RiKo), who were importers/wholesalers to the hobby for many years, but it will be some small garage operation. It's complicated/detailed enough to be a Micromodels reprint?

Another chocolate freebie, from Suchard / Milka in Switzerland, this time, where it seems to have contained a stack of milk-chocolate 'tiles'? Simple construction, like most of the 'container' buses we've seen.

The windows are unfortunately filled with postcard images of the Swiss alps, which rather detracts from the usefullness of the otherwise well renderd and colourful card bus model!

A couple more corporate freebies, these for Tayside, and no other details visible, so might be in-house or printed by a third party, nice colour-scheme, for a regional bus/coach firm, I thought, all ruined by the Tories of course!

 

Thornton's toffee box! Nice inserts if you can be faffed with the folding, which I couldn't for the photo-shoot, and yes, I've since cut my nails! the wheels stick down, which must have made stacking them a bit of a nightmare? But they may have folded/packed them, per-order, behind the counter?

A very complicated one from Tramalan, with a decorate-it-yourself motif going-on there! Hardly surprising it's a tram, given the publisher's name, and a Blackpool one with two pantograph gantries and something else delicate looking - I'm not a tram expert!

 

 

As mentioned above, some of the card buses are too-big, or too-built to be in the folders, so I suspect the bus for this little diorama is in the big box. But we have small scale card-flat figures, which is the best yet! And coming at us from West Midlands Travel.

Tom Smith, cracker toy, Whimsey from Wade and Thunderbird figure purveyors to the masses for many years, also did indoor fireworks, which came in a box, that looks like a bus, bargain!

I love indoor fireworks, apart from the fact they leave the house stinking like a war-zone and your saliva tasting like rendered-down sugar-candy, and the best one is the volcano, which churns-out a grey rubber-worm, feet-long, if it works right!

Welcome Break! When we were kids, the few and far between Motorway Service stations were an excitement akin to the Starship Enterprise, now they are mostly run-down and/or hideously expensive places to stop at, for a snooze or to empty your bladder. And only the overly paid, or overly stupid actually purchase anything there!

 

It is probably the second-biggest single lie in Britain after the efficacy of TV detector vans, that somehow these sites, which were suually built on compulsorily-purchased green-belt/agricultural land and get their deliveries straight off the road-network should somehow be the most expensive petrol and retail outlets in the land? Yet, no one with any power or influence has ever questioned this obvious anomaly, of capitalist greed, writ large!

 

Go phuq yourselves Welcome Break, go phuq yourselves with your phuqing over-priced, ersatz happy-meal, from your ersatz phuqing 'pantry'; Julie? Schmoolie! In a green bus - which I have to admit - does have a nicely printed underside, da' phuq anyway, greedy bastards!