Q is for Question Time - Astronauts

Not really a 'question time' per se, as I know they are converted key-rings, and from the sculpting style, from the same stable as the PVC footballers we've seen here once or twice now, so Hong Kong originally, but these are actually solids in a dense polyethylene, so possibly a little earlier?

 

I just wondered if - given the faces - they aren't trying, despite the garish space-suits, to be the crew of Apollo 11? The chap on the right looks particularly specific, rather than the usual generic baby-face of the later (?) footballers?

Collins in the middle, Armstrong on the right and Aldrin on the left? I know the orange hair's all wrong, so am probably being over imaginative, but it's nice to think they might be caricatures of the original crew!

V is for Very Fine Sight!

During Brian Berke's recent sojourn in Italy, he bought this pair of larger scale items, as rather brilliant toy-related mementos of their visit, and nothing more iconic than a Vespa moped . . . with added babalicious babe from Babalonia!*

 

In Brian's own words;

"The two wheeler riders in Naples and surrounding area are positively demented.

This may be part of the universal road rage post Covid lockdown, though I suspect they were this way before.

The roads are narrow, which does not deter 2 wheelers from passing cars both into oncoming traffic and curbside at the same time. They go down pedestrian only streets. There are the equivalent of Zebra crossings. The custom is walk across and ignore traffic? Do not make eye contact. It was quite unnerving. Two wheelers don't stop they weave around you as you cross.

So I had to purchase this as it represents the most notable memory of the trip. The scale is larger than I would like but I wanted to buy it in Italy rather than later. The figure was the only one I could find, bought in the US which surprisingly it pretty accurate in terms of rider dress code near the beach!

It has gone on display temporally while the trip is fresh in the memory."

For a speculative purchase, they work very well together, and at 1:18th scale (approximately 90/100mm or 3-inches) the bathing beauty from American Diorama looks perfect on the Maisto moped, and one can imagine her posing in the warmth of the evening's setting sun, in one of the Piazzas, while her beau fetches a soft-scoop ice-cream cone!

We have a scaler, with the Crescent shooter, it's a trope which has rather fallen by the wayside in the last few years, not least because of everything else which has been going on, but I intended to have a couple on the planned, dedicated photo-station, once I'm fully settled, and we'll get back to 'berserker' comparisons!

As part of an eclectic display of odds and ends!

Brian shot an actual one in situ!

Many thanks to Brian for these, it's nice to have something a little left-field, and with a first for American Diorama (poured PU resin), it also adds to the underused Maisto (doe-cast) Tag . . . and, it's a babe in a bikini!

* I think I nicked that from Bill & Ted!

S is for Shelfies - Morrison's

Morrison's supermarkets have taken a leaf out of the 'George at Asda' type business model, and invented the in-house Nutmeg branding for what is collectively, or sometimes rather euphemistically called 'homewares', and among them are the inevitable Poundland-type tat, of which a few are always figural, and I shot these back in April;

The world is groaning under the weight of this stuff, but, if it's figural, I have a sense of duty to annotate it when I encounter it! And, let's be honest, the picture has been the same in toys since the first Tramp Steamer arrived from Hong Kong filled with cheap polymer knock-offs, 70-odd years ago!

It's pored resin, which is pretty stable, so on one level will last forever, whether at the bottom of the ocean or in land-fill, without doing much obvious harm (except possibly confusing future alien archaeologists), but the trouble is, it chips easily, and those chips end-up being ground under-foot into micro polymers which will end up in the environment and/or the food chain.

It's no longer a question of if or when you get micro-polymers in your body, but how much is there already, and the family cats, dogs, local squirrels etc . . . Butterflies were down so much this year an emergency has been declared.

Mini pot-Gnomes, about 90/100mm maybe, they have those weird rods in them which I haven't managed to identify the material of, they may be a coated steel or something more exciting/exotic like a reinforced carbon-fibre?

 

I rather liked this, the mouse is a bit big for role-play, but if you fantasy wargame in 54mm (and some do), this could have a use somewhere in the background! That's it, a few bits I saw out and about, a while ago now!

T is for Two - Taffy & Thomas!

Except it's only the one gun, and it's a Poplar Plastic Product, but we're returning for a third/fourth (?) time to the Poplar-Taffy-Thomas 5.5" gun, and hopefully sorting out the difference between them, which I highlighted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/t-is-for-two-taffy-toy-and-twin.html

. . . a while-ago now! And worth a quick revision, so you can see what's being said here!

 

I actually shot this at PW's show I think, and had the opportunity to look at it more closely at Sandown Park the other week, and while it's a nice set on any level, it's also an explanation of the two types we looked at back in 2017, where a piece or two were missing, compounding the mystery then!

The [now] obvious screw-thread on the end of the barrel of the Thomas (?)/Poplar gun actually takes a pretty substantial moulding; the 'Flash Eliminator', which needs to be substantial, as it houses a firing cap, and needs to hold and direct the mini-explosion into the back of a 'shell'.

 

  

As per the instructions!

We sorted the Thomas (et al) Jeep/Jeep-driver out with the help of Chris Smith, around the same time, and here's another, pulling the under-scale (for the Jeep) artillery piece, note the hole for the plug-in's, one of which we saw in that post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/p-is-for-problem-solved.html

Not terribly clear, but we have seen them in a plunder-post, I think, and I know I have some in the 'unknown ammo' zone, so we'll return to this subject again, just to cross the final t's and dot the i's! They look like micro' space-ships, little squat domes with four shallow fins toward the 'skirt' end, they obviously go over the heavy flash eliminator, and are propelled by the small charge of the cap.

Sometimes as kids, when you were firing-off a roll of 200 caps at your brother/mate, from behind cover with your little die-cast six-shooter near your face, you would get the odd bit hit you in the face, and - whether bits of powder or bits of paper - they stung, as they were/are coming off a mini explosion, and the power was/is there, if only in miniature!

Box end; and thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.

"Carefull, or you'll have somebodies eye out with that"

Is probably, now, the true reason for the second, simplified Taffy version!