About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Thursday, January 11, 2024

C is for Composition Crates

As well as regular dips into (and revelations on) the model aircraft range of early Palitoy over the years, here at Small Scale World, we have also had numerous dips into the output of Zang and Zang for Timpo, using their Timpolin pumic-based composition, including several looks at the aircraft, showing the Horsa Glider for the first time, and the Navy which has since appeared everywhere!

Today we're looking predominantly at the B17 Flying Fortress, of which these came in, via a rather convoluted deal, a year or two ago, I spotted them late at night on feebleBay, eMailed a friend who I knew would A) be interested and B) most likely to be a rival bidder, he knew the seller, and wasn't that interested, so messaged him and bought them, the seller then posted them direct to me, and I settled-up later with the payer!

I know they came from one of the few decent toy museums still going, and may have been spares or just surplus to requirements and sacrificed to raise funds for more 'grail' or exhibitable items, but it was the first time I'd seen them. Note how the British one has 'our' camouflage scheme, the two US ones 'theirs', while a late-war (8th Air Force?) machine is finished in silver, and clearly caught flak!
 
I'm not sure if the rust-brown colouration in this damage/crack is the linseed-oil often used as the main mixing-liquid in compositions, particularly European ones, or signs of a metal armature being deemed necessary, on these larger models? There's no hint of them on the other aircraft, nor the figures, so I suspect not.

Having seen the Gloster Whittle before as an archive item, I now have my own, which Adrian Little of Mercator Trading kindly put to one side for me a while back. So I now have personally;
  • Lockheed P-38 Lightnings (and the later Timpo diecast version)
  • Boeing B17 Flying Fortresses
  • De Havilland Mosquitos (two brandings)
  • Hawker Hurricane/s (or Supermarine Spitfire/s, I can't remember!)
  • Gloster Whittle
and we've seen here before, the;
  • Horsa Glider
What will we see/uncover next? Or maybe Collectors Gazette would like to have a punt? What? All publicity's good publicity, isnt it? Heh-heh-heh!

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