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.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

P is for Panits Laszlo, or is it Laszlo Panits?

There are four things I can say about these, and with little else to say, I might as well get stuck in without a long opener!
 
The first thing is that I could have sworn we had these on the Blog about 15-years ago, but I'm damned if I can find them now, they are not in the Tag List, yet the above image was taken before I ever had a Blog, and had gone to the dongles as 'done', so they must have been posted somewhere, maybe they were on my long-defunct Imageshack account, which I had for about 18-months, about 16-years ago! In which case they may have been posted to a long-gone HäT Forum article or something?
 
I think the upper ones are copies of Preiser, the lower set a mix of Esci-Ertl and Airfix sculpts.
 
The second thing is that I genuinely don't know if the firm/shop/chap is called Panits Laszlo, or Laszlo Panits? In trying to research the company (Google has got shit in the last ten years), I discovered quite a few of both, but without the comma we'd use in English - Hugh Walter or Walter, Hugh - it's imposible to work out which is commonly the surname or the forename, how they are typically presented, or if, indeed, in Hungarian, there's no difference, but the fact that there are quite a few, suggests it's the equivalent of a John Smith, or Andy Brown.
 
And neither point is meant to upset any Hungarians reading, I'd love input from them, to explain the points? But it's Panits Laszlo on the back of the card, so that's what we are going with.

The third point is the obvious stuff, they are factory-painted, HO/OO sized (1:76th scale), whitemetal piracies of Airfix, mostly RAF Personnel, or Esci NATO Ground Crew, here, I suspect, painted up as Warsaw Pact Hungarians, with the other sets painted-up as WWII USAAF-USAF, and with at least one figure taken from Airfix's set of that American title.
 
Set contents also vary from card to card, so you could - presumably - choose a card that would most closely allow you to set up your diorama, with whichever kit you were making? And I think the message stamped on the front just says "Model Figure Card" (blister/pack).
 
And I've forgotten what the fourth point was going to be, but it's worth mentioning that Panits Laszlo were probably responsible for the other Esci copies seen here in the past - which I also can't find, Doh!!
 
So, we'll have it 'again'? Also copies of Esci, also factory painted whitemetal, not seen on these cards, and here not divisible by six, there may be some damaged ones in the bag taking the sample to 24? But they otherwise seem to be the same idea/concept as the air force figures above?

And that's it, that's them, box ticked, I don't know a lot, I suspect it/he (Panits Laszlo) was also a model shop in Budapest, and if anyone can add anything, their input will be welcome.

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