C is for Centurion

Bit of a box-ticker, this one; another Sandown September purchase, and I didn't really take enough shots for a whole post, but it's been off to storage for a while. Nevertheless a useful beast to add to the pile, not terribly rare, but interesting, and it will need comparison with the Dinky one I picked up in that Charity Shop plunder, a few years ago . . . and the various Hong Kong plackys!

Not the US Premier (Premier Products Co. / Premier Plastics), the  Palmer subsidiary, of Brooklyn, on the opposite bank from Pyro, it's actually manufactured in Japan. The box is a bit tatty, and I need to track down the correct ammunition, which I'm lead to believe was plastic, but the tank itself has been well looked after and is very clean, it will be even cleaner after a dusting!

Arguably the Centurion was the best tank ever made? While others were very good at specific times or for specific purposes, the Centurion brought together everything we'd learned about tank warfare in WWII, combining the best of both British concepts - Cruiser Tanks and Infantry Tanks - into one 'main battle tank'; fast, yet heavily armed and armoured.

It gave rise to the whole post-war Vickers family of  Centurion-Chieftain-Shir-Challenger, and it's ideas, design concepts and DNA are to be found in the M48/60, AMX30 and Leopard I, it performed well against T34, T54-55 and 62/72, and the aforementioned M48/60's in wars from Korea, through India-Pakistan and the various middle-east conflicts, and went into Angola with the South Africans, who still operate a heavily modified and upgraded version called the Oliphant, while Jordan (and possibly the genociders next door) still use the chassis for various specialised or second echelon vehicles.

Aiming at the US market with the number sign, or 'octothorpe' (Bell Labs), now known as a 'hash' (British Telecom) or 'hash tag' (Chris Messina), rather than the '№' which would have been the acceptable symbol in the UK at the time, and online it seems to be known as the Premier #144 Tank.

It has a novel firing mechanism, with breech-loading from the turret-end of the barrel, and cocking via  a leaver which leaves a rather unsightly slash through the top of the turret, while firing is achieved by pressing down on the commanders head!

Somewhere between 1:50th and 1:60th in scale, only a side-by-side with the Dinky will settle that for me, unless you know for sure? It's a mostly die-cast alloy model, with a tin-plate baseplate, and what I suspect are silicon rubber tracks of some recipe/compound, due to their lack of drying, brittleness or deformation over, what, 50-plus years?

A is for Atom Bomber

Ah, yes! Alongside the white heat of technological advancement, let's have the white heat of atomic annihilation! Originally a Thomas Toys hit in the late 1940's USA, Poplar Plastics carried it over here, maybe in the early 1950's. 

 

No real/specific scale, but maybe around 1:144th?

 

Sitting somewhere between a B29 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)/B50 Superfortresses, and the C97 Stratofreighter (the bulge and fold-line down the fuselage), it's not really any of them, and is a typical dime-store approximation! Mine has probably lost a bunch of stickers/water-slide transfers, but it was still an awesome find, at the last Sandown Park toy fair.

 

The Thomas versions are shown as having a central nose wheel in the same yellow plastic as the other small parts, so mine may have a replacement pair from something else, but it seems to have age and fit nicely, so it could be an updated feature of the Poplar version?

 

I'm missing a bomb, and I know I don't have one anywhere in the various spares stashes, so I'll have to look out for one, luckily it's quite distinctive, about 3cm, and ringed/winged like a dart-board dart, without the point. Pressing the plunger on the upper fuselage, opens the brass doors, and the 'all metal' bomb drops out, it's not sophisticated!

 

In the US there seem to have been two retail versions,, the plane and bomb, in a box, the box doubling as a target with various military objects to try and hit, printed on the lid. The other is a much more expensive affair, with an exploding battle ship in alternate blue/yellow deck/hull, with red turrets and superstructure parts to fly off! I don't know what Poplar issued, but after finding that submarine and rocket set, earlier this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if they offered both configurations over here.

BARC is for Big American Rolling Carrier!

No it's not! It's for Barge, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo, although it became the LARC, or Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo [60 ton], and this is something I'd always wanted to track down, not because it's of much use, Roskopf manufactured in a nominal scale of 1:100, and while some of their stuff actually stood up quite well next to Roco Minitank's 1:87th, a lot of it was too small for most wargamers, no, I wanted one, just to see it, it was such a weird choice for a model!

 

Although, define 'use'; that was when I fancied myself as a wargamer, 50-plus years ago, really I'm a collector, and as such, size isn't the main problem, although if it was die-cast and 1:32nd, you'd need a wheelbarrow to move it!

 

And at Sandown Park, last month, I found this!

It does exactly what it says on the tin!

 

It comes with a loose-leaf info' guide, which may or may not be the only one issued, punched for a folder which never existed? I have a reasonable sample of Roskopf models and haven't got any other such sheets, not that there's room in most of the boxes for one, even if they were folded very small?!

 

It also has a spare waterslide transfer (inset), whether that means the owner applied the other transfers, or they just included a spare, I don't know. And, as you can see the contents are ALL model!

 

19 feet high, 26 feet wide, 63 feet long.

 

Four engines, two propellers.

 

The Roskopf model is actually of the prototype, with the cab at the front, or the 'open end'! And (rather like all those British toy soldiers of the 1950's with demo' EM2 bullpup assault-rifles), depicts the demonstration vehicle, with the large fancy hull markings.

 

If you've read the Wikipedoa page (link above), and go and watch this video, you'll know as much about this bizarre vehicle as I do, but I've got one!

 

This was extracted from one of the two remaining Sandown posts, and I think I'll break it up, as I've taken quite a few shots of each of them, and it's just easier than trying to get them all in one post!

 

Unknown

 

1971

 

1975 / 2

Roskopf catalogue scans, note how the price rose through the late 1960's to the mid 1970's! Ohne panzer means 'without tank' When we look at the Roskopf sample, we'll see it again, with a tank!
 

C is for Combat Contributions

Bit of a theme this PM, but it seemed to make sense to get a bunch of toy soldiers up on the Toy Soldier Blog! There's so much stuff in the short queue, I'm spoilt for choice, on one level, but on another I keep wondering how to do them all justice.

 

Some subjects will make show reports, or more than one post, some are a bit thin, and with stuff from Adrian, two lots from Peter and other bits, they'll go together in the end. This is from all three donation-purchases, in that I paid for them, but at definite 'mates rates'!

 

German Red Cross WHW's, this is the last of Adrian's recent stock, from which I and others have been picking for a few years, now that I've identified at least three issues in bare, and one painted on black plastic, I feel I need to enlarge the core sample, to see how many variants I can identify?

  

 

A nice tin-plate Sikh, possibly a cigarette premium, another Zang Tommy (slightly drunk), and what I thought was a Spanish-made Spanish paratrooper, but I can't find him in the big book, so he might be Italian or Portuguese? Marked '185' on the base underside.

 

From one of Adrian's junk drawers, came these metal bits, including one of the Timpo die-cast machine-gunners.

 

From Peter now; ABC 8th Army types after Timpo 'solids'.

 

Small scale - with a bag of Airfix 1st version German Infantry and 8th Army, two of the Chap Mai figures who need de-gate-mark'ing! And a tatty Blue Box G.I.

.

Hong Kong/China odds! Taken from Airfix, TimMee and Lido originals.

 

More ABC or related - I can't remember what was on the base!

 

Modern rack-toy junk, still have their place, but I've probably got them all, I think the bag is the HTI stuff we saw when they were in the shops (probably still are!), while the lot in front seems to be further-generation copies, in that crumbly, over recycled plastic you see men in sandals making from unwashed plastic bags in weird 'industrial' video 'shorts' on YouTube!

 

MPC, need to be sorted against what I already have, but I think the blue chap is new?

 

Late  production New Ray, or good quality copies of the same?

 

A pair of Deluxe Reading and three rack-toy skinnies!

 

The two on the left look like late Speedwell, the Hilco on the right matches them rather nicely, colours wise! I'm looking forward to sorting all the finds from the last few years into the master collection, and giving the Khaki Infantry page a good update/correcting session!

 

God knows! Marked Hong Kong, so copies, but there are so many versions of these; several US, a couple of Canadian and a few HK lots, I will have to do a big sort-out one day, and matching-up the little silver accessories will send a Saint insane! originally MPC.

 

These have the satin sheen of a fine-nozzeled 3D-printer about them, and they are all, indeed, 3D printed, Peter may have mentioned a maker, or download library title, I can't remember, and they are a bit 'Army Man' or generic G.I.

 

The sandy figure is a Monty, complete with both cap-badges, but a little dumpy I feel, smaller, and better fed than the Timpo solid one!

 

Crescent swoppets, a nice clean sample, although I think the colour variation in the green accessories may be down to sun-bleaching?

 

Anyone who saw the shot of the French/British paratroops I sent to Plastic Warrior a while ago, will know I didn't have the sand-coloured one, so despite the missing top of the string-loop (a common fault with these after seventy-odd years), a really nice addition to that line-up!

 

And, after my minor disaster at this years PW Show (the Aussies who weren't!), here's the desert version of the M-Toy or Star (lesser quality?) swoppet copy, stretcher-case I just need to find the porters now! 

 

Finishing a rushed blurbing (got stuck behind a Nissan Juke going no-miles-an-hour on the way home tonight - some people just shouldn't drive in the dark, or in the rain, or at all!), a few of the soft plastic versions of Marx's Miniature Masterpiece Americans, being scale-downs of the larger figure ranges.

 

Many, many thanks to Adrian Little and Peter Evans for constantly putting this stuff to one side for me, it's all grist to the mill, and there's always interesting bits among it, cheers guys! 

P is for Pratas, Portugal, but not Plastic!

I picked these up at the races! Totally new to me, and while Brain Carrick did know them, he couldn't remember the name, as he had sent them to someone else and eased the data out of the mental pending tray, if you know what I mean, anyway, I digged a dugging and now think they are Pratas a family firm (the Pratas family), who have apparently given their name, as the generic 'pratas', to all composition figures in Portugal!

 

Bases are in the Lineol style, but unmarked and smooth, I rather like the touch of the stands of wool for the plumes, redolent of the old British hollow-cast knights, with their airgun dart plumes!

I believe these are cadets, but whether officer-cadets, or something less elevated, I don't know, and could only find one image that sort of matched? Uniform seems to be loosely based on old Napoleonic-era garb, but in a paler grey-green, than the darker greys of the earlier period?

 

Not wishing to make the same mistake I made with the French swoppets a decade and a half ago, I am pretty certain that the green beret is a Paratrooper, and the red are commandos, Portugal does or did have a maroon, darker than ours, technically a brown, which was worn by the Light Infantry, now disbanded or replaced, with the beret possibly phased-out in 2019? But the green and red berets serve on.

 

The DPM uniform here is compatible with the Army's operations in Mozambique and elsewhere in the 'Colonial War' which ended in 1974, but worn through to the late Cold War. It has now - like many nations - been replaced with a smaller-fragment, more generic patterned one.

 

Scale is between 54 and 60mm, depending upon your ruling regarding deep bases, and they did do some smaller (50+mm) figures. The flags are making little sense, clearly meant to be the Portuguese national flag, I suspect a non-stable green-dye has completely faded? I have some fabric markers somewhere!

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #3

Brian's third visit this year, was to Hobby Lobby (similar to our Hobbycraft, but ours carries less of the kind of stuff we're about to look at here), where he found some useful sets of classic rack-toys, which seem to tick all the boxes!

 

 

Cold-blooded critters; the amphibians hidden among the lizards again, and we now suspect some Dinosaurs were warm-blooded, because birds are, and they are the direct descendents!

 

Fantasy; and there are more poses here than with the set we saw the other day, including a prone one, I never know if it's lying down, or the equivalent of sitting? Also there's five colourways, not four, but perhaps a more assorted assortment, in fact it looks like each colour is a different pose, with about three in each colour/pose?

 

Farm . . .

 

 

. . . and Zoo!
 

With sets dedicated to temperate/woodland animals and arctic fauna. Sculpt-count is good with these sets as well, but, as Brian pointed out in the eMail, climbing, price-wise. Still cheaper than the European equivalents though (those Peterkins are closer to a tenner, with the cheaper ones £7.99), and I dare say a mix of new sculpts, older sculpts and the odd rip-off of Schleich, Papo, or similar modern brands.

 

The others; insects and marine/sea-life. As with all the above, some look familiar, some look all new, but the suspicion is that where similar, they will be copies, so are 'variants', as far as collecting goes? All the above seem to contain duplicates, possibly pairs of everything?

 

What some of you have been waiting for, the combat troops, sculpts we've seen before, but they appear to be clean, new sculpts, rather than pantographed sub-piracies, of 'Fritz' helmeted generic US/NATO types, with the daft ATGW firer! Vehicles are simple moulding we've also seen before, as are the interlocking wall sections.

 

But these are probably more interesting, ACW types, and I don't think they are the Billy-V/Americana ones from BMC, nor the Hing Fat chaps, so new sculpts? I don't know enough about them, but if they tickle the fancy, I suspect they'll need a purchase over there, to get them over here! In fact, they look like copies of Accurate/Revell? And there's some useful artillery in there, with metal axles?

 

Many thanks to Brian for his visits to Dollar General, Daiso and Hobby Lobby, this year, highlighting the inevitable inflation (resulting from Trumps tariffs), and covering current production in/for the US. I did manage a trip to B&M a couple of days ago and found little, and will also check the rest before the end of the holidays.