F is for Follow-up . . . and Update, and Image Dump, and A-Z Page Update and Contribution and Apology! Highlander Miniatures!

Jason, who I think might be Jason Pontiac (?), sent the Blog a shed-load of Highlander Miniatures stuff, which has been languishing in Picasa since 2020. Now, with Covid-19 that year, then a Mother, Friends and two beloved Cat's, dying about the place, over the next three years, while I fought HMRC, HMCTS, local authorities here and in the Channel Islands, a lazy, belligerent Brother and an . . . uncommunicative Step Mother, not to mention venal auctioneers, grasping antiques dealers, and dishonourable Estate Agents, I hope Jason will forgive me for taking so long to sort this out, especially given that I have churned out some 2000+ posts in that time, but it needed time, it needed a clear head . . . and there's more!

Armour

M60 A1's, A2 'Starship's, M107 and M110 SPG's

 

All the work on this ephemeral firm has been done here at Small Scale World over the last 11-years, with help from several people. And as part of my own research, back at the start (2014) I found, when Google was still useful, a catalogue, listed in a University's research and reference library, back in the US.

I wrote to them asking if it would be possible to have a copy, for wider dissemination (on the Blog), expecting a small fee for a couple of stock images, only to be told it would be in excess of $25 dollars, which makes one wonder how people can afford serious research, the answer is increasingly, they go to European or other countries' places of learning!

Anyway, I didn't proceed at that time, knowing that if it existed it would turn-up, and in 2023, with the images from Jason still sitting here, I found one on eBay, which with postage was less than the American Uni' wanted, so now I have the whole thing, to share with everyone, for free, and which is on the A-Z entry, or it will be in the next few hours (by the time I publish this), covers, below;

Front

 

Back

 

It came with a 1977 dated price list, but there's an extra set, listed in the catalogue, and descriptions differ between the two, and with the cards we've already seen, so it's a hard one to annotate, and I've been re-writing the listing for an hour or two already, and thought I'd get this started to help sort out my thoughts, and the images, some of which will go over there!

Jason's main aim was showing us the longer-barrelled SPG, and the standard M60 A1, but he also has a lot of infantry , guns and other stuff, which he remembers going to a ". . . toy store 'warehouse' in Brooklyn in the mid 80's" with his father, and purchasing them, presumably as clearance?

Image dump - finally!

 

Another small development, was the purchase a couple of years ago of an A3 scanner, allowing for the scanning of larger documents, and so I scanned the old broadsheet-cutting as one piece, and because the catalogue is split here, and whole on the A-Z entry, while the split cutting has been on the A-Z page for a number of years, I thought it could go here, whole, for balance!

So, many apologies to Jason for the time it's taken to get his images up here, and many thanks for his sharing them with the rest of us. His subsequent purchases of carded sets, and some AFV close-up's, have gone on the A-Z entry, along with full-scans of the gate-fold catalogue, the price-list, a fully updated product listing and some card scans.

And to anyone else who's sent stuff, I haven't got round to yet, it will all get put-up here eventually!

 

It needed a quiet Christmas morning . . . and half the afternoon!

 

https://smallscaleworld-g-h-i.blogspot.com/2016/02/highlander-toy-and-miniature-military.html 

 

The full entry is still not 100% complete, and certainly not definitive, but it's the best info' on the Web, and seems to sum up the company's history and product list, to a satisfactory level.

T is for Tente - Tank Transporter and Tail-ends

So, the last of the Tente stuff in the car-booty found by Peter Evans back in the Summer, and it's 'most of the rest', of what seems to have been a ten-kit set, although I've got bits of naval vessels in the same 'army' green, still not a colour offered, in any quantity, by Lego, so the full range may have gone to 12 or 15 boxes?

 

The tractor unit is vaguely based on the Kynos Aljaba 8×8, but that was an 8x8 (obviously) not a 6x6, so it's a very loose resemblance, some Soviet tractors look similar, but usually with a closed cab, as do/are the Faun SLT's of the Bundeswehr.

 

With the trailer, which is even more generic!

Always hard to photograph tank transporters (or large ship models), simply because of the horizontal dimensions! But these give you some idea. The previously seen Tanque, and the Ambulance, before I had found its loose bits and reattached them!

 

It came with its own (2nd model) tank, the bulk of which was missing from the car boot find, and which is closer to the ex-US Patton or Pershing M46/47 & M48/M60's that were common in the Spanish inventory for the bulk of the post-war/Cold War era. But most of the turret was in the bag, and with the barrel off the other, I could produce that, for a photograph!

 

Alternate suggestions mostly involve slight tweaks to the configuration, but the half-tracked transporter is spacey! While the tank becomes a chunky-monkey personnel carrier or wheeled tank.

 

The ephemera awaiting scanning, includes a half-track which was also missing, however, I think bits of it might have been in the less-than-colour-matched ambulance truck, we saw at the start of this sequence.

 

 Reverse of its instructions include a vague weapons-platform, and a cargo-truck.

 

Missing numbers are the Missile Helicopter, a quadruple SPAAG, based, clearly, on the Soviet-era ZSU-32-4, while, not illustrated anywhere here, was a large 8x8, wheeled APC, coded #0751, which was probably the weakest model in the range - body too big for the wheels, giving it a very open and top-heavy look.

 

All the important bits of the helicopter (cockpit, rotor, tail, skids) were also in the bag, with a handful of bricks which may have been helicopter, but may have been half-track, if you were to follow the instructions! Another bag of bits and a pair of the shorter tracks, and I will be able to complete both!

So, many thanks to Peter for spotting these, and saving them for the Blog, something a bit different!

T is for Tanque!

No messing-about with autoblinder-carro-panzer'whatsits, if the Brit's are calling them Tanks, we'll call them that too, but with our spelling - Tanque! We arrive at what is probably the penultimate Tente military post; I could squeeze two more out, but one would be pretty weak!

Not really resembling anything in service, but quite a mean looker, with a nice long tank-hunting barrel, although the turret is a bit boxy. The tracks and hull might be a bit Sheridan? This was one of two tanks in the series, the other came with a tank transporter, while this was boxed separately, as #0750.

 

Alternate suggestions on the back of the instruction sheet include a very chunky APC of the tank-hulled 'Kangaroo' type, and a front-engined SPG, which is closer to the British Abbot, than the American M109, but with the gun set back too far, and too high, practically-speaking?

C is for Cañón Autopropulsado

The next piece of semi-fictional military hardware in what the Spanish know as the Scorpion line, but without cultural knowledge of the little icon, the rest of us just tend to call the Tente military 'stuff'! Based loosely on an M109 US Self-propelled gun.

 

Another two suggestions, one a rather chunky-monkey in the vague shape of a Russian/Soviet SU-something-or-other, and the other an asymmetric, side-mounted SPG, looking like a mean space-tank hunter!

It took about 20 shots to get one with as little reflection as on this shot, so once I've got the scanner plugged in again, I'll get all this stuff scanned, although there's plenty online for these models.

A is for Ambulancia de Campaña

Continuing to mosey through the Tente car-boot sale find of Peter's, and we're with the 'Field Ambulance', Ref. 0755. One thing I have noticed with all this sample, is the variation in shade of brick colours, but that's probably down to the same-shaped bricks being swapped between kits, but it does, still point to poor quality control, that different kits/batches would be different colours?

 

The vehicle is in the style of a Steyr-Daimler-Puch Pinzgauer, a light utility/GS vehicle with off-road capacity but no war-fighting or front-line role, and I don't know (and can't find) a similar Spanish make of vehicles, nor is Spain listed as Pinzgauer users, but all the vehicles in the set are pretty fictional really!

 

Rather like the 'war', or undeclared fight between VHS and BetaMax (where Beta' was netter, but VHS 'won'), Tente is the superior system, with more flexibility in construction, brought about by the fact you can either hug the studs (like Kiddycraft's pirate, Lego), or lock on to the central holes in each stud.

 

Another couple of alternate builds on the back of the instructions, each model seems to get two suggestions, with two-step build photo's you have to work through. I seem to recall, at one point, Lego used to put similar illustrations on the outside of the box?

L is for Lanzamisiles

To be specific, the Tente military set - 0753 Camion Lanzamisiles, and I know, I try not to do army/death stuff in December, but the queue says otherwise, this year! And this is exactly the sort of stuff you might have found under the Christmas tree in the late 70's, or 80's, especially if old Aunt Maud didn't understand about the vagaries of Lego-compatibility!

 

When we fire brightly decorated missiles at each other! Such marking goes back to the German V-Programme (Vegeltung - retaliation, retribution, revenge, or reprisal - like Trump, the philosophy that it's always someone's else's fault, if it's not going the way it was supposed to, when you started it!), and painting the test rockets in such a fashion, was to be able to tell (from the video [film] footage) how they performed, where or why they spun, and/or exactly where or how they failed first. Target drones are similarly decorated for visibility.

 

Lanzamisiles is simply 'Launcher of Missiles', or missile-launcher, and the toy, once completed, does not fire the missile which is locked to the launch-bar with a row of the more-complicated-than-Kiddycraft studs! I think the truck may be a loose Pegaso 3000 series?

 

When these came out, Lego were still producing pretty box-like, civilian vehicles with few specialist or 'cool' parts, and even when the space sets first came out, we only got a few new parts, dishes and hand-tools mostly. Indeed, when the ariels were added to the Lego space sets, they were far simpler and more toy-like than the one Tente had been using for some time.

 

Spain remains non-nuclear, so this would have been a tactical, battlefield artillery missile, to deliver a high-explosive, heavy-punch, with - hopefully - more accuracy, or devastation than fire-and-forget artillery rounds or heavy mortars!

 

Some ideas for alternate models which could be made from the contents of the box, the whole point of construction sets for kids, something lost on the Kidults, who can spend $1000 on a Millennium Falcon, which takes ten days to build and never gets touched again, except in house moves, or when the partner attacks it with a broom-handle upon exiting the relationship!

 

"I took the sofa apart, but never found the second air-tank in the smugglers' alcove, it's just not the same now!"

B is for Britains - Seen Elsewhere, Eye Candy and Odds & Sods

Although, some of this might hurt your eyes, but even the mighty falter and in the end, everything dies.

 

Toward the end, Britains tried to get away from 'war' war, and the whole WWII, 'Boys Own', ♪♪♫Two World Wars and . . . ♪♫, "I mentioned it once . . but I think I got away with it / You started it!" type toy theme which had served British kid's so well since 1945, by adopting first this generic UN theme, then some of the silliness below! Standard farm version of the Short Wheelbase (SWB) Land Rover, given a United Nations makeover. Here missing its 'hard-top'.

 

Using the late version US Infantry (solid sculpts, no moving, plug-in arms), accompanying UN troops (Task Force Action Figures) were provided, along with several other paint schemes as 'enemy' or just other units, only available for a couple of years in the mid-1990's, they should be rare, but many retailers were left with unsold stock, and a few years ago most dealers had mint sets on their tables!

Arctic warriors?!

 

Sold with a desert version of the Land Rover as 'Desert Storm'!

 

75p was still a fair-bit of money for a kid in 1996, and that's for one figure!

 

 The final indignity - Task Force Special Units

 

I showed a few of the other-coloured ones on the Airfix Blog;

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2020/02/1983-cold-warmodern-sas-special-air.html

with more shots on the Modern British Infantry post. 

 

Slightly safer ground with these, the two standard packagings for the earlier WWII-themed support weapons 'Combat Weapons', here the British Mortar (also given to the Germans) and the US Recoilless Rifle (also given to the Japanese!). There was a longer card, which was the display one, designed to sit across the top of the counter-top box, and sold last, after the box was empty.

 

 

There was an attempt to relaunch the range in the mid-2000's by First Gear, who had bought the intellectual property rights and a few of the moulds (most are with DSG in Argentina), and a couple of 'realistic' paint issues were forthcoming, I think these are the second tranche, the first having matt-green bases and better paint?